THINGS SEEN IN LONDON 




THE TOWER 

It is supposed to stand on the site of a British and a Roman Fort. The 
present building was erected shortly after the conquest to overawe the 
citizens of London. The fortifications surrounding it date from the reign of 
Henry III, 1216. A royal residence was built by Henry I, between the 
Tower and the river, but was pulled down by Oliver Cromwell, and nothing 
of it remains. 



THINGS SEEN IN 
LONDON 



BY 

A. H. BLAKE 

M.A. (OxoN.),' F.R.HisT.S. 



WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS 



NEW YORK 
E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 

68 1 Fifth Avenue 
1920 






Gift 



TO MY FRIENDS AND COMRADES 
OF 

THE LONDON AND COUNTY RAMBLING 
SOCIETY, 

IN WHOSE COMPANY I HAVE SPENT SO MANY HAPPY HOURS 

EXPLORING LONDON'S IMMENSE VARIETY, 

AND TO MY FRIEND, 

W. S, J. COLLINSON, 

WHO MOST KINDLY TROUBLED HIMSELF TO LOOK OVER 
MY MS., 

I DEDICATE 

THESE FEW NOTES ON "THINGS SEEN IN LONDON." 



A. H. BLAKE. 



CONTENTS 

HAPTER PAGE 

T. THE GREATNESS OF LONDON - 17 

II. THE HEART OF LONDON - - 30 

III. THE CITY AND THE EAST END - 48 

IV. THE GREENERY OF LONDON - 66 

V. HISTORIC HOUSES - - - 80 

VI. HISTORICAL RELICS IN THE STREETS 95 

VII. THE LIFE OF THE STREETS - 112 

VIII. BY THE RIVER - - - 126 

IX. LONDON BY NIGHT - - 143 

INDEX - - - - 156 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

HE TOWER FROM THE TOWER BRIDGE Frontispiece 

PAGE 

RCHWAY AT THE HEAD OF CONSTITUTION 

I HILL - - - - 20 

RITISH MUSEUM - - - 24 

lARBLE ARCH - - - - 28 

HARING CROSS - - - - 30 

i^HITEHALL AND THE WAR OFFICE - 32 

(WESTMINSTER ABBEY - - - 36 

V^ESTMINSTER ABBEY, FROM THE EAST - 38 

WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL - - 40 

^EOMEN OF THE GUARD - - 42 

xiii 



List of Illustrations 

TUDOR ENTRANCE GATE OF ST. JAMEs's 
PALACE - - - - 

BUCKINGHAM PALACE - - - 

BANK OF ENGLAND AND EXCHANGE 
GUILDHALL . - - - 

LUDGATE HILL AND ST. PAUl's - 
HYDE PARK CORNER - - - 

QUEEN VICTORIA MEMORIAL 
ROTTEN ROW - - - - 

HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT 

THE speaker's CHAIR - - - 

FLEET STREET - - - - 

IN THE TEMPLE - - _ 

THE GEORGE INN, BOROUGH HIGH STREET 
ALDWYCH _ - - - 

THE NATIONAL GALLERY 
ARCHWAY IN LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS 

xiv 



List of Illustrations 

PAGE 

WHITEHALL - - - - 120 

LAMBETH PALACE - - - 128 

Cleopatra's needle - . - 134 

LONDON bridge - - - 136 

rOWER BRIDGE - - - - 144 

SOMERSET HOUSE - - - 152 



XV 



Things Seen in London 

CHAPTER I 

THE GREATNESS OF LONDON 

FIGURES give very little idea of the 
gigantic size of modern London. To say 
;hat it has seven millions of inhabitants, so 
nany thousand streets, and so many hundreds 
)f thousands of houses, conveys little impres- 
don to the mind. These are mere figures, and 
my real conception of its size still eludes us. 
Perhaps a better idea of size could be gained 
)y the old Gladstonian method of exploring 
;he streets from the top of a bus, say from 
jolders Green to Croydon and from Ealing to 
£ast Ham. The two lines drawn across the 
nap would bisect one another about Charing 
Jross and mve some idea of the character of 

o 

17 E 



Things Seen in London 

London, its size and variety, along those lines, 
but the maze of streets for miles on either side 
of them would still remain as unknown and as 
little realized as before. 

Perhaps it is some help to travel back in 
time and see what London was like in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The 
two cities of London and Westminster — the one 
small, compact, and included to a great extent 
within its encircling walls; the other some- 
what larger and more straggling, but yet small i 
in extent, with the green fields still close att 
hand — comprised nearly the whole of London.. 
Their history is '' a tale of two cities,'' and all ' 
around these rural districts extended on all 
sides, pleasant country roads, villages withi 
their greens and churches, such as Clerkenwell, , 
by the pleasant banks of the Fleet, Islington, . 
the abode of the dairy-keepers, St. John's 
Wood, the hunting-ground of the Prior of St. 
John's, and Clapham, even in the days of 
Pepys's old age still able to be truly styled by 
Evelyn "paradisian Clapham." So London ii 
remained with a very gradual growth from thet 



The Greatness of London 

jentre outwards until the great Victorian exten- 
lion which set in about 1837. Since then 
London has been increasing by leaps and 
rounds, and has already swallowed about 
ifteen miles of country in all directions. We 
Ihus learn to regard it, not as one place, but as 
tn aggregate of places, and the word " London " 
,s a geographical expression. 

To visit any other great town in England is 
o visit a place with an individuality of its 
•wn more or less distinct. Liverpool, with its 
f)ocks, dock traffic all through the streets, and 
[reat commanding administrative and art 
entre; Newcastle, with its smoky river and 
[igh-level bridge and swarms of industrial 
workers; Canterbury, with its active eccle- 
iastical and civil life, and a great past that 
•roods over everything — one and all they have 
( single individual life, but not so London, 
-'he foct that she has twenty-nine mayors tells 
cs own tale of her aggressive work against her 
•eaker neighbours. She really is a collection 
f districts and neighbourhoods, conquered by 
i-icks and mortar and labelled by one common 
19 



Things Seen in London 



cc 



appellation, but having no true unity 
coherence. If London acts unitedly, animatee 
by one common impulse and unity of feeling; 
it acts for the nation — it is acting and speakiii 
imperially and ceases to be merely Londom 
At any rate, London never realizes unity — it 
never one place. Though no less than elevtt 
great railway lines have their termini in ii 
midst, there is no station called " London/' 

What is true of London is true of Londonei 
If it is not one place, neither are they oi 
people. Differences of rank, of occupatio | 
and suchlike, are characteristic of most plact 
but few towns have such a tendency as Londc, 
to localize and centralize their classes arii 
occupations. In truth there are so many :i 
each class, such numbers in each trade << 
profession, that there are enough to mai 
separate colonies of those of the same positi( 
or occupation. We speak of Parisian quarte 
— those of London are quite as distinct. 

The artistic colony at Chelsea, Clubland 
Pall Mall and St. James's Street, the Jewi; 
colony of Bayswater, are all examples in poii 
20 




I Kodak 



ARCHWAY AT THE HEAD OF COKSTITI'TIOX HII.L 



The Greatness of London 

But it is when we come to speak of the 
foreigner within our borders that we realize 
Iiow widely diversified are our peoples. We 
liarbour representatives of every nation under 
heaven, and in some cases so many of them 
that they have gradually taken over and 
annexed for their own a district which ffains 
tjuite a distinctive character from their presence. 
The Italian colony took possession of Little 
Italy long years ago, and more recently annexed 
i^oho and started that dining industry which 
has made Soho the region of cheap catering. 
The social standing of the habitues of the 
tv/o Italian centres is, of course, quite different. 
Little Italy is the abode of the organ-grinder 
and the icecream man. Any morning early, 
in Soho, can be seen the proprietors of the 
^ various restaurants or their buyers engaged in 
I laying in stores for the day, in some cases 
buying from the shops of their confreres, in 
others, where extreme cheapness is necessary, 
I from the stalls which line the kerb in certain of 
their streets, notably in Berwick Street market. 
Nowadays it seems likely that the Soho district 

21 



Things Seen in London 

will become completely changed, partly because 
a newer Soho is springing up across Oxford 
Street, the more because the cinema industry 
is ousting the cafe where "little dinners'' used 
to be served, and replacing it by the offices and 
small theatres of the play producer or the film 
renter. 

Another typical quarter is the Yiddish 
district in Whitechapel. Let anyone desirous 
of exploring this district arrive, say, at Aldgate 
or Aldgate East Station and set himself to 
sample the cheap goods, cheap food, cheap 
amusements, that are offered all around. 
Nothing need be missed, in spite of the fact 
that the play will not be understood, the 
paper cannot be read, and many of the un- 
accustomed luxuries provided will be strange 
and weird, if no worse, to the Gentile taste. 
In this way a knowledge of one strange quarter 
of London will be gained in a few hours which 
otherwise it might take years to acquire. It 
would be an easy matter to point out other 
distinctive districts, such as Chinatown, the 
haunts of the poorer Poles, and the Russian 

22 



The Greatness of London 

bank, Post Office, and Cafe, where vodka and 
other national drinks could be obtained before 
the war. 

Again, in the matter of industries there is a 
tendency, daily increasing, to revert to the 
mediaeval custom of localizing particular trades 
in certain definite districts. What once were 
the green slopes of Clerkenwell are now covered 
with the workshops and factories of those who 
mend or make our watches, while Long Acre 
has been for nigh two hundred years devoted 
to the carriage and harness making, but is now 
gradually transforming its industry into the 
allied business of motor-car making and fitting. 
The Old Booksellers' Row is gone, but Pater- 
noster Row is still preserved, and the newer 
Charing Cross Road is devoted to the sale of 
books, though bargains are rare now and one 
seldom drops on a "find." The very cheap 
book industry finds its quarter in the Farring- 
don Road, and books fill the gutter from 
Holborn Viaduct onwards until they gradually 
degenerate into stalls for old iron, clocks, 
pictures, and so forth. 

23 



Things Seen in London 

All this goes to show how varied are the 
types of Englishmen that London supports, but 
more varied still the different foreigners that 
settle in our midst. They gradually draw 
together into districts, attracted by the ties of 
blood and sympathy, by the facilities for 
business gained when the same trades frequent 
the same localities and form distinctive quarters 
amidst the wide areas of London, 

Perhaps the impression that London makes 
upon the visitor is different from that which she 
makes upon the Londoner. Both, when London 
is mentioned, have a mental picture of Charing 
Cross, the open spaces of Trafalgar Square 
with the National Gallery looming large, while, 
in further differentiating, the visitor knows 
especially well the part where his hotel may be 
situated, while the other knows two centres 
more or less intimately, the suburb where he 
lives and the place where his business house is 
situated. Probably the Londoner knows little 
more of the rest of London beyond these limits 
than the visitor, except that he has a working 
knowledge of how to get from place to place 
24 



The Greatness of London 

and how to do it in the least time and at the 
cheapest rate. 

Both the Londoner and the visitor have a 
bowing acquaintance with the best-known 
places and sights. They have visited things 
that are much talked about — St Paul's, the 
Abbey, the House, the public galleries — and in 
answer to inquiries say they know them ; but 
this is not to know London. London still 
eludes them. The mind recalls the policeman's 
hand that holds up a mile of traffic, the fire- 
engine dashing wildly through the crowded 
street while the traffic draws to either hand and 
crushes to the pavement to let it pass, the 
sanded streets waiting for a royal procession, 
the tide of vehicles along Piccadilly on a 
summer afternoon when the sunshine streams 
up it from the west — notes these are, momen- 
tary impressions, but though phases of London, 
London itself is still elusive. As it is not a 
single city, no single impression of it as of 
other cities can be gained, and yet it is possible 
to conceive that some clerk, public official, or 
artist, is doing the same for London to-day 
25 



Things Seen in London 

that Pepys did in the seventeenth century by 
his writing, or Hogarth in the eighteenth by 
his " pictured morals,"" and putting down day 
by day that which will make us live again to 
our successors. Pepys could do his morning 
work at the Navy Yard in Seething Lane and 
find time, after learning all the gossip of the 
city, to go to Whitehall in the afternoon on 
business with the Duke of York and afterwards 
pick up all the news of the gallants about the 
Court. He could practically lay his hand, so 
to speak, upon the London of his day — know 
all there was to be known and be known by all 
in return. Such details as any single man could 
pick up to-day might be useful and entertain- 
ing for future reading, but no man could lay 
his hand upon the whole of London and its 
daily doings as Pepys could do in his time. 

One writer says that each Londoner bites off 
a piece of London big enough for his own 
chewing, and that is truly about all he can do. 
Though he may know the taste of a few other 
pieces, he can never bite, much less chew or 
digest the whole. 

26 



The Greatness of London 

After acquiring some general knowledge of 
the London of his pleasure or his business, all 
that anyone can do now is to get a little 
general information about why London is where 
it is now, how it has expanded during the 
centuries, and what its chief characteristics of 
to-day are in comparison with other capitals. 
This gained, he must, if he wishes to go on 
with the study, be more or less of a specialist 
and concentrate upon one particular subject or 
on one particular locality. This he can do and 
do successfully. There are many men who 
know one such branch thoroughly and usefully 
well, and their knowledge is both entertaining 
and of practical utility. One man knows the 
city churches, another the history of the sacred 
vessels they contain, another the London 
statues, and so forth, and by the sum of their 
knowledge some idea of London and its interest 
can be gained. Others take the locality where 
they live or work and concentrate on that — the 
history, for example, of Clerkenwell, St. John's 
Wood, Islington, and so forth — treating it for 
the purposes of study as a separate entity, and 
27 



Things Seen in London 

isolating it for the purpose as if it were one 
single place and distinct from the rest of 
London. Such studies are the work of a life- 
time, and never fail to interest. 

In this way what may be begun as a pleasant 
pastime may turn into a lifetime pursuit and 
prove of absorbinginterest. To those whose 
work lies in London and who are denied all the 
year round, with the exception of the brief 
summer respite, the delights of countryside, 
one can imagine no occupation of more endur- 
ing interest than the study of a portion of 
London, some aspect of London life, or some 
particular antiquarian research. It involves 
the reading of the special books that deal with 
it, and long walks to visit the survivals that 
form the subject-matter of study. It will have 
something of the sporting interest of search 
and discovery in a bloodless quest, and keep 
body and brain alive and keen outside the 
routine of the daily struggle for bread. 

Elementary and short as the chapters of this 
little book naturally are, there is no reason why 
they should not arouse interest in such studies 
^8 




\ Kodak 
THK MARBLE ARCH 

Designed by Nash, it was originally erected in front of Buckingham 
l^alace, Ijiit was removed in 1.S50 to its present position. 



The Greatness of London 

as these. They indicate certain lines of study 
which might quite well be elaborated. There 
is a life-work in photographing, describing, and 
learning the history of the old houses or the 
old signs which still abound in our streets. 
The types of the London streets deserve a book 
to themselves as much as the types of whole 
nations which have been already treated of. 
The night aspect of the streets, the histories 
enshrined in the open spaces of London and 
the part they have played in its story, the 
City — the heart of London — the river, have 
yet much to offer in history and picture. If no 
such advantage be gained by the reading of 
this little work, at any rate it cannot fail to 
draw attention to much which will give added 
interest to the most casual walk about the 
streets and squares of London. The old relics 
of a bygone time still seen in our streets to-day 
tell often very vividly of the romance of yester- 
day. The chapters of this little book may be 
to those who know little of London signposts 
pointing the way to further study. 



29 



T 



CHAPTER II 

THE HEART OF LONDON 

I HE heart of London is situated at that 
JL curious angle which the river makes at 
Charing Cross. This great bend, as has been 
justly said, hopelessly confuses the topography 
of the centre of London. It makes the bear- 
ings of certain streets and districts strangely 
puzzling. To continue in an almost straight 
line after passing southwards over Westminster 
Bridge would hardly be thought the best way 
to pass from south to north over London Bridge, 
and it is surprising to find, after a walk of con- 
siderable length has been taken from the 
Banqueting Hall in Whitehall up to Trafalgar 
Square and along the Strand to Waterloo Bridge, 
that in a few minutes the same distance can be 
covered through Whitehall Place and along the 
Embankment. 

30 



The Heart of London 

Charing Cross has lost much and gained 
ii little since its name was descriptive of its 
jjharacteristics — the Eleanor Cross by the village 
i)f Charing. To realize what it used to look like, 
.ve have an easy way in the print by Hogarth 
lialled "Night." Its cross was demolished 
luring the Commonwealth, and we have to be 
content with the doubtfully correct replica 
jin the Charing Cross Stationyard. The 
statue of the King on horseback on its island 
at the top of Whitehall, which took cover 
during the war, marks where it used to stand. 
This statue is a remarkably fine one ; it was 
London's first equestrian statue, and is still the 
best. During^the Commonwealth it was ordered 
to be broken up, and the work was given to a man 
of the name of Rivet of Covent Garden, who did 
a good business by the sale to the Royalists of 
the replicas which he said he had made from its 
materials. But he and they were frauds. The 
statue was never destroyed, but brought out 
again at the Restoration. After certain 
regicides had been executed on the site, the 
statue was put up where it still stands. 
31 



Things Seen in London 






In the Hogarth print the King's Mews is 
seen behind the statue. This was taken down 
to make room for Trafalgar Square and the 
National Gallery, the first Victorian attempt to 
do something to improve and open up London, 
a work which is still going slowly on in our own 
day. The heart of London may be said to 
include all those streets which, like the spokes 
of a wheel, find here a common centre. If onq 
comes to think of it, they are fairly representai 
tive of London as a whole and most compre^ 
hensive in their characters and differences. 

Whitehall is the seat of the nation's business, 
in both home and foreign affairs, and in a sense! 
it is worthy of the honour. Wide, impressive, 
and sweeping with a fine curve to its objective in 
Parliament Square, it should impress our visitors. 
It has a'^fine savour of old days, first in the 
Admiralty buildings, to which the brothers Adam 
added in the eighteenth century the fine fac^'ade ; 
in the Horse Guards and its parade ground, where 
military spectacles like the "trooping of the 
colours " on the King's birthday are held, with 
its suggestions of old days of tournament and 
32 




[Kodak 



wiiri'EiiAi.r. Axn the wak office 

The new War Office was completed in 190t5. 



The Heart of London 

armoured knights, and later of the cockpit 
where the Stuart Kings enjoyed the royal sport, 
and of the house called " The Cockpit," where 
Princess Anne lived and from which she fled 
with Compton, Bishop of London, forsaking her 
father in his decline of fortune. 

Across the way one never sees the stretches of 
greensward where the Clive statue has now been 
placed, and farther west before the houses in 
Richmond Terrace, without remembering that 
they are the lineal descendants of the grass of the 
privy garden where Charles II. and the Duke of 
York played bowls (and played remarkably well), 
and pendant from the clothes-lines on which 
Master Pepys saw the ffiir lingerie of his much 
admired Lady Castlemaine fluttering in the 
breeze — "the finest that ever I saw, and it did 
me good to look upon them.'"* But the pearl 
|of Whitehall, one of London's treasures, is the 
Stuart Banqueting Hall, a little to the north. 
To use an Irishism, it maybe said to be all that 
remains of a palace that never was built. Inigo 
Jones was commissioned to draw up the plans, 
which we can still study, for a magnificent 
33 c 



Things Seen in London 

palace on the banks of the Thames. The only 
part that materialized, however, was this 
Banqueting Hall, and it is a fair sample to 
show us what the completed work would have 
been like had the Stuart Kings not been so 
chronically short of money. 

Perhaps more history is associated with this 
building than wdth most of London's survivals. 
Here or in its predecessor Frederick, the Elector 
Palatine, was introduced by Prince Henry as 
the suitor for the hand of the Princess Elizabeth, 
who, after her marriage, for her charms and her 
misfortunes earned the double title of " Queen 
of Hearts '' and '' Queen of Tears."" In front of 
this building on that 30th January, 1649, 
Charles I. died with a dignity and kingly 
bearing that went far to atone for any mistakes 
he made in life — "nothing in his life became 
him like the leaving it '" — and to the wind vane 
on its roof James H. on the eve of his flight 
must have turned anxious eyes, for the wind in 
the east meant the sailing of the ships which 
should bring his son-in-law to wrest his kingdom 
from him. 

34 



The Heart of London 

After various vicissitudes as Banqueting 
Hall and Chapel Royal it is now a museum 
of naval and military curiosities, and sums up 
the humour and pathos of some of England's 
greatest deeds by land and sea. Here can be 
seen the foremast of the Victory, with the hole 
made right through it by a round-shot during 
the course of the action in which Nelson, whose 
bust stands close adjacent, lost his life. Here 
at times only, since it is private property and 
only lent, is the Cambridge blue silk vest 
stained with his blood which Charles I. wore 
on the scaffold hard by. Relics of past 
campaigns are abundant — such, for example, as 
the desk of Sir John Moore, used by him in his 
last campaign, and the prayer-book from which 
the service for the burial of the dead was read 
over him before he, "folded close in his soldier's 
cloke,"' was lowered into his grave on the 
ramparts of Elvina in the supreme moment of 
his masterly retreat. In a frame is found also 
a facsimile of the original lines, learned by and 
possibly hated by all Victorian schoolboys, 
which Wolfe wrote to commemorate his exploit. 
35 



Things Seen in London 

They were written on half a sheet of writing- 
paper at a side-table after a breakfast, during 
which he had been hearing the story of this 
bold thwarting of Napoleon's plans against 
Portugal. 

Whitehall is a fitting passage to the open 
spaces which set off the Parliament Houses and 
the Abbey. Here are statues of some of those 
who have won honour in debate and admini- 
stration hard by. Beaconsfield, with its yearly 
adornment of primroses, is well known, but 
some of the others are so little regarded that 
many Londoners could not on demand give you 
the names they owned. Near by is the latest 
effort of municipal enterprise — the new West- 
minster Town Hall — which, at any rate, is 
better in keeping with its surroundings and a 
more dignified building than many which 
London has recently erected. Westminster 
Abbey seeks a book to itself and does not come 
within the scope of this little work, but it may 
be urged upon the visitor not to be content 
with merely seeing the inside of the building — 
a museum of architectural and archaeological 
36 




[ Kodak 



WEST-AIINSTEn AUliEY 



Occupies the site of an old Benedictine Abbej-. It was begun by Edward 
the Confessor and dedicated to St. Peter. 



The Heart of London 

interest — but to wander round the cloister with 
its sense of peace in the heart of London's 
noise, its memories of conventual life and 
activity, and its curious epitaph to the dead 
prize-fighter and that other one that always 
lingers in the memory on account of its 
simplicity, sincerity, and sadness : " Jane Lister 
deare child." It is eloquent of hearts crying 
out for the touch of a vanished little hand. 
" The little cloister " is an oasis in the midst of 
hurry and rush, and retains the calm and 
dignity of bygone days. Seen in autumn with 
the trails of reddening Virginia creeper drooping 
from its old buildings, and its fountain's mur- 
muring splash only accentuating the quiet, it 
is a " home of ancient peace " not easily to be 
forgotten. 

The end of the dark passage-way brings us 
into Westminster School Yard, with many 
memories, not the least insistent being that of 
Dr. Busby, noted for his wig and cane. Old 
Palace Yard and Westminster Hall belong to 
the greater sights of London, which do not 
concern us here ; but the visitor, as he looks at 
37 



Things Seen in London 

Henry VII. 's Chapel from Old Palace Yard and 
at St. Margaret's Church, will recall two things, 
that on the spot of ground now covered with 
grass on the western side of the chapel the 
house occupied by Chaucer probably had its 
foundations, and that Sam Pepys, the diarist, 
led to the altar of St. Margaret Elizabeth 
St. Michel, and afterwards signed the register, 
and his signature remaineth unto this day, 
though his diary and the register do not agree 
as to the actual date. 

Old maps of London enable us to realize the 
Hay market when it deserved its name. One 
can see the wide lane in which the hay was 
sold, and there are cows grazing in the 
meadows and a woman spreading out clothes 
on the sunny greensward to dry. Its great 
theatre now upholds all the best traditions of 
the stage, and is unsurpassed for presentments 
in which realism and truth of impression are 
carried to heights never imagined possible in 
Victorian days, while the little theatre across 
the way has many memories of those same 
days, of Buckstone and the Kendals, and later 
38 




n o 



The Heart of London 

of Hawtrey and of " The Blue Bird." The 
Haymarket is really a short straight street 
joining up London's great centres of western 
traffic — Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus. 
The latter is a unique thing — no other Circus, 
in London or out of it, is quite like it. Seveii 
streets debouch into it, and all but one are 
streets of great importance. Perhaps it is 
the most distinctive at night, and no one who 
has seen this maelstrom of traffic just as the 
theatres open to receive, or, better still, to 
disperse, their clientele, is likely to forget the 
mad, gay scene, and the blaze of light that 
glares from a hundred arc lamps upon the 
festive crowd under the soaring Apollo statue 
to the memory of an anything but sporting 
Duke. The good man, had he known the site 
selected for the fountain which perpetuates his 
memory, would certainly have thought that 
the most inappropriate spot in all London had 
been chosen for his memorial. 

Leicester Square, which comes within the 
heart of London, is one of its great play- 
grounds. Leicester " Fields '' have been the 
39 



Things Seen in London 

scene of many endeavours to amuse the public, 
and hither Loutherberg drew all London to his 
famous scenas. George II.'s statue had its day, 
and ignominiously ceased to be when the horse 
had been painted by the facetious with spots 
and some of its legs were gone. Now the 
Square has become most respectable, at any 
rate by day, with its fountain and Shakespeare 
statue, and has moreover learned the secret of 
drawing thousands nightly to its two variety 
houses. Here we are on the borders of 
Bohemia, the region of cheap dinners and 
foreign tongues. This was originally the true 
Bohemia, but now it is generally the resort of 
those who are playing at being Bohemians — 
somewhat of a fashion now — and this has driven 
the genuine article farther afield, to hide its 
head and enjoy the eccentricities where the 
tail-coat and the ball-dress are conspicuous by 
their absence. Another Soho is springing up 
to the north across Oxford Street, but the 
foreigner has not yet got his grip sufficiently 
strong upon it to give it the distinctive 
character of the old quarter. 
40 




\Kodn 



WESTMINSTER CATIIEDUAI, 



Finished in 1903, and designed by J. F. Bentley, in early Christian 
Byzantine style, in red brick and grey stone. The Tower is 284 feet 
high. 



The Heart of London 

Few greater contrasts could be found than be- 
tween Leicester Square and Pall Mall, between 
Soho and St. James's Street, though a few 
minutes will enable one to visit them all. Pall 
Mall holds its dignified position as the centre 
of Clubland, and St. James's Street is the men's 
quarter, if there be one in London, as Regent 
Street and Oxford Street may be said to be the 
women's own streets, especially at sale times. 

The shortest of the many great streets that 
lead out of Trafalgar Square is Cockspur Street, 
the centre at one time, as its name implies, of 
the manufacture or sale of the spurs fastened 
on the cock's leg for the sport of cock-fighting. 
It leads to an aimless cul-de-sac, Warwick 
House Street, down which no one ever seems to 
want to go. One is inclined to do so just to 
break the spell. 

An old street and a new one lead from the 
east side of Trafalgar Square towards the 
north. St. Martin's Lane, once a mere country 
lane at the time that it got its name, has 
theatres and cheap eating-shops, with some 
dentists and a vegetarian restaurant thrown in. 
41 



Things Seen in London 

Its upper part has a distinctive character of its 
own, and savours of horse sales and harness, 
with some new shops and offices of the cinema 
industry. Charing Cross Road, not very happily 
named, is one of London's new efforts. Except 
at the cheap stalls in Farringdon Road, there 
is no better place to go for second-hand books, 
though bargains are becoming rarer every day. 
The most distinctive of all the hubs of the 
wheel of Charing Cross streets is the Strand. 
Known in old times by the largeness of 
its houses and the miriness of its ways, it 
still is distinguished for the former, as some 
of the biggest and most consequential of 
modern multi-millionaire hotels are situated 
there. It has the quaintest shops, even to the : 
second-hand trunk dealer, as well as the largest . 
number of theatres of any street in London. . 
It has a centre of Civil Service work at Somerset t 
House, a medical school next door, and the 
legal business of the country at the Law Courts, . 
while the Temple, just over the City boundary, J 
is one of the show-places of London, and would I; 
require a whole chapter or a larger work to)j 
42 I 



The Heart of London 

itself. The Strand is really shaped like a 

trumpet, with its narrow end at Charing Cross 

and its widest at the point where St. Clement 

Dane's Church, with Dr. Johnson's seat in the 

church and his diminutive statue outside, 

divides the traffic. Its open spaces, left at the 

opening up of the Kingsway, used to provide 

the Londoner with his wild-flower garden. 

Rose bay, the largest of the willow herbs, 

I showed a mass of pink blossom which, gazed 

at even through the interstices of the railings, 

I did one's heart good to look at, but now new 

[Austraha House covers the site. It is difficult 

' to account for the cosmopolitan character of the 

Strand, but certainly it has a large quota of 

our foreigners and naturally a strong flavour of 

I the actor and the artiste. 

I The fact that one of the roads radiating from 
Charing Cross leads to St. James's Palace brings 
the Royal Palaces of London into notice. 
St. James's, like others, owes its origin to the 
establishment on the site of a leper hospital 
dedicated to St. James. It was during Tudor 
times and in the reign of Henry VIII. that it 
43 



Things Seen in London 

first became a royal residence. The union of 
Henry and Anne Boleyn took place at the same 
time that Henry converted it for his purpose, 
and the ' H and A ' will be found in stone on 
its face woven together in a true lovers'* knot. 
Queen Mary used it after her desertion by 
Philip, and James I. gave it to his son Henry, 
Prince of Wales, as part of his independent 
establishment, and here he died untimely young. 
It became a place for accouchement of Queens, 
and many Royal Princes were born here to the 
house of Stuart, including the unhappy Edward, 
son of James H., while William IH. stayed here 
when his asthma would let him. The monarchs 
of the House of Hanover also freely used it. 

It is now chiefly used for the King's levees, 
and for the reception of those guests whom the 
nation delights to honour. One of the mosti 
famous of these was Count Blucher, who, 
smoking at his window in Ambassadors'* Court, 
used to hold a kind of reception of the people 
who came there to take stock of him. The 
changing of the guard in the Friary Court is 
one of the sights to which visitors to Londom 
44 



I 




TITDOR ENTRANCE GATE OF ST. JA3IES's PALACE 

The Palace stands on the site of a hospital for 14 leprous maidens, which 
was acquired by Henry VIII as a hunting lodge. The palace was designed 
by Ho'bein, but only the Gateway and a few other parts remain. 



The Heart of London 

re always taken. It is certainly a puzzle how 
he mixed crowd so characteristic of London 
omes together every morning. There appear 
be hmidreds of able-bodied men of varying 
anks in life who can afford every morning to 
)ilow the band from the barracks to St. James's, 
wait the time — and it is not short — required 
)r guard-changing, and return with the relieved 
uard to barracks. Who are they and where 

they come from, and how, if at all, do they 
lake a living ? Besides, it must be intolerably 
ull to do this each day (and some at any rate 

1 the crowd are daily visitors) in wet or fine, in 
'arm or cold weather. 

Buckingham Palace, another of London's 
Dyal residences, is close at hand, and part of 
le ceremony of guard- changing is carried out 
lere when the Sovereign is in residence. 
Originally the piece of ground upon which it is 
tuated was laid out by James I. as a mulberry 
arden, when he started his fruitless scheme 
)r encouraging the silk industry in England. 
)eserted by the silkworms, it became somewhat 
lady in character and the resort of such ladies 
45 



Things Seen in London 

as loved the cheese-cakes provided there and 
the company of the gallants. Pepys, of course, 
records a visit to it. After the death of the 
Duke of Buckingham, who had built a house 
there, his widow refused to sell it to George H. 
under an excessive figure. This being too 
much for the royal purse, matters stood over 
until eventually it was acquired by George III. 
for his Queen's dower-house. It has been the 
dowdiest royal palace of Europe, put to shame 
by the royal residences of the tiniest European 
states, until the present alterations have at any 
rate given it a clean face, and brought it into 
line with the wedding-cake ornaments of the. 
Victoria Memorial, which is all that the modern 
artistic taste of this great nation could devise i 
to do honour to the memory of one of our most 
beloved Sovereigns. 

Of Kensington Palace there is little to be^ 
said. It did not take rank as a royal residence 
till the time of William III., and he only lived 
there because the air was better for his asthma 
than nearer to town. It has touching remem- 
brances of the last sudden illness and death 
46 



a 



The Heart of London 

)f William III/s Queen, to whose worth and 
iffection he seems to have awoke too late, and 
)f the unseemly wrangles of Sarah Marlborough 
A'ith her too indulgent Sovereign, and the sad 
lays of illness for poor Anne as her end drew 
lear. Its happiest and dearest associations are 
vith the beautiful childhood and early promise 
)f Queen Victoria. The picture which the mind 
)f every Englishman retains through life is of 
:he little Virgin Queen roused in that palace 
iTom her slumbers to take upon her shoulders 
:hat burden of duty towards a world-wide 
Empire which she bore so long and so honour- 
ibly. If only for the sake of Victoria the Good, 
Kensington Palace, uninteresting as a building 
ind chiefly associated with a far from lovable 
King, will never lack visitors. It had additional 
interest as the repository of a collection of 
iLondon antiquities, which now has its home 
jelsewhere. 



47 



CHAPITER III 
THE CITY AND THE EAST END 

IF Charing Cross is the administrative an( 
geographical heart of London, then the Cit; 
may be said to be its commercial centre, anc^ 
the centre of this commercial centre may bo 
taken to be its most crowded spot where sevei 
roads meet — at the Mansion House, Exchange 
and Bank. All day long a vortex of traffic 
surges through this pass, and, viewing the scenes 
from above, one is apt to wonder how thij 
congested web of traffic can ever be unravelled. , 
An historic road of great importance leaxls 
from this main junction of City traffic to where,: 
as a religious centre, St. PauFs commands the 
Hill. This is Cheapside, known in old days as 
West Cheap or the Cheap, to distinguish iti 
from East Cheap, now partly sacrificed to widen 
the approach to the new London Bridge and to 



The City and the East End 

accommodate a very ugly statue of the Sailor 
King. It is a splendid sample, even in its 
modernized form, of what an old London 
business centre was like. The streets which 
run into it in many cases still retain names 
indicating that they were the seats of particular 
industries. Friday Street points to the sale of 
fish for the Friday fast, while Bread Street, the 
birthplace of Milton, Wood Street, with its 
great tree happily protected by the terms of the 
lease of the property on which it grows, and 
Milk Street, the birthplace of Sir Thomas 
More, all tell their own tale, and so does the 
little street which connects it with the Bank at 
its eastern end — The Poultry. 

Through this thoroughfare in old days most 
of the great processions connected with our 
history passed : the coronation procession of 
Edward VI. ; the entry of Mary de' Medici into 
London on a visit to her son-in law and 
daughter, Charles I. and his Queen ; the 
magnificent entry of Charles II. at the Restora- 
tion — to mention only three. Royalty viewed 
such spectacles as tournaments, which were then 
49 D 



Things Seen in London 

held in its wide open spaces, from the seldam 
attached to the old front of Bow Church. 
This church is worthy of its place in this historic 
street. It rests on the same Norman arches as 
the one which preceded it. These arches give 
it its name — St. Mary of the Arches — and from 
them also the old Court held here was named 
the Court of Arches. Many interesting relics 
of the old church can be seen in the lobby, 
while its bells still play a modification of the 
old refrain, "Turn again, Whittington,"" and 
are still said to confer on those born within 
sound of their music the right to the title of 
" cockney."' 

A few minutes'* walk from the western end 
of Cheapside leads to another interesting city 
centre — Smithfield. The live -cattle market 
which made it abominable has long been trans- 
ferred elsewhere. The Church of St. Bartholo- 
mew the Great on its eastern side will never 
lack visitors, being the finest Norman church 
left us in London, though it is but a fragment 
of the magnificent building of the founder, 
Rahere. Much has been done to open out and 
50 



The City and the East End 

improve the church and to get back into its 
possession those parts which had been for 
centuries ahenated from sacred uses. To-day 
we are able to get a very fair idea of its dignity 
and importance amongst the ecclesiastical 
buildings of London. The adjoining Cloth 
Fair is not so well known as it deserves to be. 
It is one of the finest and most characteristic 
bits of old London that remain to us, though 
already shorn of some of its best houses and 
soon to lose more. It is built upon one of the 
old streets of the famous Bartholomew Fair, 
which kept up its merry life from the days of 
Henry I. till the year 1855. One of the most 
notable houses herein was the Dick Whittington 
Inn, only recently demolished, with the quaint 
supports of its upper story. 

A tablet let into the wall of Bartholomew's 
Hospital near the entrance to the church indi- 
cates the spot in front of the church gate where 
no less than 277 persons gave up their lives for 
their faith, being burnt to death during the 
reign of Queen Mary. 

^Valking by way of Giltspur Street from 
51 



Things Seen in London 

Smithfield and its open spaces, once the favourite 
place for tournaments and the meeting-place of 
Richard II. with the rebels under Wat Tyler, 
who lost his life there, we shall notice the yard 
of the new Post Office on the left. This build- 
ing is on the sight of the old Grey Friars 
monastery and later of the Bluecoat School, now 
luxuriating in country surroundings at West 
Horsham. In the centre of this yard is a trap- 
door leading to a chamber below ground level 
containing a fine bastion of old London Wall. 
It is well preserved and surrounded by water, 
which gives it quite the old-time appearance 
which it had before it retired from active work. 
Other portions of the old wall of London can 
be seen in the churchyards of St. Alphege, 
London Wall, and St. Giles, Cripplegate, in a 
yard on the east side of Tower Hill, in the base- 
ment of London Wall House in Jewry Street, 
and many other places. In fact, by taking a 
good map and following the line of the old wall 
and noting its appearances to-day, an excellent 
idea may be gained of the dimensions of old 
London within the wall and how small it really 
52 



The City and the East End 

was— in fact, easily encompassed in a two houi's' 
walk. 

It often happens in the City that an ordinary 
and prosaic-looking street either contains or 
leads to objects of great interest. Lying to the 
east of Liverpool Street Station and entered by 
an insignificant little street with a big name, 
Widegate Street, lies the district known as the 
Dutch Tenters. Here there has been in some 
half-dozen streets for some 200 years a settle- 
ment of Dutch Jews, whose well-appointed 
houses, treasures in china and brass, pei-sonal 
cleanliness, and good behaviour, all speak well 
for the adopted country from which they come. 

Again and quite near at hand another turn- 
ing opposite the Great Eastern suburban sta- 
tion, named Cutler Street (which boasts, by the 
way, an old street sign dated 1734 and indicating 
in its name again the location of industries in 
particular streets), leads to a warehouse tall and 
uninteresting-looking, but full of the produce 
of far-off lands. Here we can view as we walk 
from room to room twenty-two miles of wealth 
beyond the dreams of avarice. Vast chambers 
53 



Things Seen in London 

are filled with precious products. Tea, ivory, 
silk, feathers, carpets from the looms of Persia, 
fabrics from China — in fact, all the riches 
and colouring of the gorgeous East blaze 
in these dull dark rooms. These goods are 
straight from the hands of those that made 
them ; they are fresh from shipboard, and the 
coverings and wrappers and boxes and descrip- 
tions come straight from the haunts of the 
native workers. 

Here are ostrich feathers from all markets 
arranged in cubicles according to quality and 
kind. You can see ^60,000 worth of them in 
a single glance — one sale will fetch perhaps a 
quarter of a million pounds, and the four 
annual sales are sometimes productive of con- 
siderably over a million pounds. The skins of 
250,000 parroquets have changed hands at a 
single sale. Humming-birds blaze in drawers, 
a rainbow of colours. Raw chemicals fill one 
department, and you do not forget the nature 
and use of sarsaparilla when you have seen it in 
bales by the hundred, nor the smell of some of 
the more pungent products which will furnish 
54 



The City and the East End 

the chemist with our familiar drugs. Rubber 
is not much to look at in the rough in its four 
varieties, though you may in a small space see 
bales which, if they were yours to sell, would 
enable you to do business as a millionaire for 
the rest of your life. In another department 
of the warehouses in Nightingale Lane there are 
sheds devoted to ivory, and d£^60,000 worth of 
tusks confront you on a single floor, and you 
learn that the natives procure more ivory from 
the shedding of the tusks or by despoiling dead 
elephants than they do from the wasteful 
process of killing an animal for each pair of 
tusks. In the basement of one series of ware- 
houses is the wine-storing department. It is 
fortunate that one is not required nor expected 
to sample the different brands, as the walk 
between the casks amounts to something like 
fifteen miles and the casks themselves run into 
hundreds of thousands. 

Lombard Street has always been a typical 

London street, and synonymous with wealth 

since the Lombard merchants first gave it its 

name. Its respectable dulness has been relieved 

55 



Things Seen in London 

hy the replicas of the old signs of the business 
houses which were put up for the coronation of 
Edward VII. and allowed to have something 
more than an ephemeral existence. It boasts 
two churches, St. Edmund King and Martyr, 
and All Hallows, with its fine old gateway 
(now in dignified retirement). A notice in the 
church informs us that, having left his written 
sermon behind him when engaged to preach in 
this church, John Wesley perforce preached 
the first of those extempore sermons which were 
to vitalize religion for thousands of his country- 
men. Dr. Burney, the father of the authoress 
of " Evelina," was once organist of this church. 
Lombard Street leads to Fenchurch Street, 
with its remote and dejected station, and from 
thence the descent of a few steps brings us face 
to face with the Church of St. Olave's, Hart 
Street, and we are in the district made famous 
by Samuel Pepys, the diarist. When he served 
at the Navy Yard across Seething Lane he 
used the Navy pew in this church, and in a 
print in the vestry will be noticed the private 
way by which the members of the Navy Board 
56 




THE GUILDHALI 



The date of the original Hall is unknown. That built in 1411-1485 \v 

allno^t destioyeil by the Great Fire, but was restored by Wren, and agai 

later on, by Dance and Perks. 



I The City and the East End 

then reached their places in the South Gallery. 
Readers of the Diary will not need to be 
reminded of the many references to " our 
clergyman Mr. Mills'' and his sermons, and 
above all to the record of his flio^ht during the 
plague and his futile explanation of his deser- 
tion on the Sunday of his return. "A very 
lame excuse and a very poor sermon," is the 
caustic comment in the Diary. In the church- 
iyard adjacent many hundreds of those who had 
died of the plague were buried, and the gate 
erected to commemorate this fact, with its 
gruesome emblems, earned from the pen of 
Dickens the title of the " Gate of Ghastly 
■ Grim." Pepys's house looked out upon Seeth- 
j hig Lane, referred to in the Diary as " our 
I Lane,'" and the space occupied by it and the 
I other houses of the Navy Yard will be found 
I indicated in the Survey Map. The church 
facing its southern end. All Hallows, Barking, 
, got alight during the Great Fire. " I hear/' 
j says Pepys, " that the fire has got hold on 
j Barking Church ;" but fortunately it was 
i extinguished in time to save the building, and 
57 



Things Seen in London 

he was able to ascend the tower, which we see 
to-day, in order to get a bird's-eye view of that 
stupendous conflagration. 

A few steps from this church are Tower Hill 
and its gardens, where, in peaceful seclusion, is 
the small paved square which indicates the actual 
position of the block upon Tower Hill where 
the lives of so many patriotic and capable 
Englishmen were shorn away to gratify the 
whims, advance the theories, or vindicate the 
authority of tyrant Kings. Here fell the head 
of More, of Algernon Sidney, of Laud, off 
Monmouth, sometimes after unspeakable suffer 
ings and protracted death, and of the lastt 
victims of the axe — the Lords who suffered fori 
the Rebellion of the '45. Few probably of thee 
thousands who visit the Tower itself have timet 
or inclination to see this historic Golgotha. 

The Tower does not concern us here except! 
by way of illustration, as it requires a guidee 
book to itself, but by the side of it the way) 
leads to the Tower Bridge, from which it standai,< 
out clearly. Even without entering its gates,^ 
much can be seen by descending the Towew 
S8 



The City and the East End 

Bridge stairs and walking along the river front 
with its guns and sentries. Here is a fine view 
of the old Traitors' Gate and the By ward Tower. 
It may be worth while to linger here while the 
association's of such an historic spot soak into 
the mind, waiting for one of the sights of 
London — the raising of the great bascules of 
the Tower Bridge for the passage out or in of 
some sea-going steamer. 

Few visit the City without going to see the 
Guildhall, with its traditional figures of the 
City's gods, Gog and Magog, and the fine hall 
and library of the City Fathers. Those inter- 
ested in old London should certainly visit the 
museum in the Crypt. Many of the relics of 
old time have found a home there, and many 
old customs are illustrated, many well-known 
signs preserved, and the history of London 
through British, Roman, Saxon, Norman, and 
mediaeval times fully illustrated by survivals. 

The Monument is another of the sights that 

every visitor thinks he ought to see, and, indeed, 

the view from the top is very fine, enabling one 

to get a grip of the topography of the City and 

59 



Things Seen in London 

to mark the lines of the streets in a way possible 
but from few City elevations. 

The Ultima Thule of the City man and the 
City visitor is generally Aldgate Pump. Here 
business and investigation generally end. It is 
customary to think of all beyond that as a 
dreary waste, a maze of mean streets, the abode 
of Turks, Jews, infidels, and anarchists, with an 
occasional Sydney Street episode thrown in. I 
hold a brief for East London. For vivid life 
and colour, for hearty good-nature and breezy 
cheerfulness, for types of humanity from all the 
nations of the globe, with all their interesting 
costumes and customs, commend me to the 
East End. Here there are few conventions : 
free-and-easy is the word, take-you-for-what-we- 
find-you kind of estimate, and let's all be happy 
together if we can, and if not, well then, come 
on and fight it out ! 

We have no sooner left our Aldgate Pump, 
then, than life grows very interesting. The 
line old-time wide streets and markets of 
Whitechapel High Street and Mile End Road 
can still accommodate the itinerant merchaBt 
60 



The City and the East End 

and find room for thousands of his customers 
when the lights flare up on a Saturday 
. night. 

Sunday morning, however, is the time for 
the Lane, by which the East Eixler means 
I Petticoat Lane, which the authorities call 
j Middlesex Street. It is not much of a business 
! centre on weekdays, but if from seeing it then 
you think slightly of what it can do, try it at 
eleven o'clock on Sunday morning. It will be 
crowded, indeed, and you will only walk through 
it at all by keeping yourself wedged in your 
place with the moving mass. It is really a part 
of a large quadrilateral of streets devoted to 
Sunday morning shopping. It includes the 
Lane on the west, Bethnal Green Road on the 
north, Brick Lane and Osborne Street on the 
east, and Whitechapel High Street on the 
south. In this area the Lane, as its name 
implies, is given up principally to the sale of 
clothing, articles of all descriptions, remedies 
for all diseases, ornaments of all kinds, and the 
dainties loved of the East Ender — the luscious 
fish which he describes from the stall as " Jeellv, 
6i 



Things Seen in London , 

jeel — ly, lovely jeelly," which makes, as he view 
it, the West Ender beat a hurried retreat — an| 
displayed upon a hundred stalls. The cycl 
market is in the Bethnal Green Road, and hei2| 
scores of men are riding or walking their bicycklj 
on the kerb edge, showing off their points as 4 
man in a horse mart might show off the poiniij 
of his animal. In the neighbouring Cygne] 
Street all the stalls are devoted to the sale cl 
cycle accessories. 

In Sclater Street, otherwise Club Row, is th;: 
Sunday morning dog sale. This is the rendei 
vous for London's lost dogs, and here you com : 
to seek your own again, while if you art 
desirous of purchasing a pet you can have youi! 
choice at prices ranging from 5d. to £i\ 
Farther down the street in its narrower wa\ 
kittens, rabbits, fowls, canaries, pigeons, guinea;! 
pigs, even rats devoted to destruction, iii 
baskets, bags, sacks, reticules, and pockets tog 
small for them, welter in one common anguisUj 
It is the animals' purgatory. Death, swift deatil 
must be the best and happiest way out fo(| 
many of these poor creatures, as, indeed, in mosi 
62 



The City and the East End 

;ases it is expected to be. That is why they are 
ihere. 

Glad indeed is one to turn the corner from 
;his gruesome market into Brick Lane, with its 
varied stalls, the contents of which fortunately 
;annot feel and see. Here we find single glove 
(tails (so many people have only one hand or 
iiore probably the other one was a waster), 
remnant stalls with pieces of all textures and 
ill patterns, whether cloth, silk, matting, 
brocade, or camptulican, while cheap jewellery, 
Jews' harps, oilcloth, patent medicines, try- 
y'our-strengths — all are here. There is literally 
something of everything and at the bottom 
price. " Name your own price," say most of 
the dealers. A man passes you with a barrow- 
ful of batch loaves with the Kosher mark, 
guarantee to the Jew of purity for his eating. 
Dos Mohammed from Peshawur on the far-off 
Afghan border makes a riot of colour with his 
silks disposed over his arms and body, and from 
him you can get bright attractive silk goods 
from half a crown upwards. But as we walk 
south the stalls soon begin to fail, and uninter- 
63 



Things Seen in London 

esting stretches separate us from Osborne Street, 
by which we reach Whitechapel again, and 
which was before the war the centre of Russian 
activity, with its Russian Post Office and Bank 
and the Russian Cafe where real Russian drinks 
and foods were available. 

Art is not neglected in Whitechapel, for 
some of the best exhibitions of pictures in 
London have been held in the Whitechapel Art 
Gallery, as well as general illustrative exhibi- 
tions of a most educational character, such as' 
the Georgian and the Jewish collections, which 
dealt most exhaustively with their subject- 
matter both in fact and picture. The exhibi- 
tions are thronged daily and are free to all, the 
only luxury for which payment is demanded 
being a long and most helpful catalogue. 

Away at Shoreditch we can visit the sites of 
the earliest London theatres. The Theatre and 1 
The Curtain, which were in full activity when 
Shakespeare came to London ; and at the 
Theatre, if at all, it was that he organized his 
band of boy messengers and saw to the holding 
of the gallants' horses. At any rate, he was 
64 








'Mfllmk 



LLDGATi; HIM, AXl) ST. TAILS 

The niasf^rpiece of Wren is said to be founded on the site of a Roman 
temple to Diana : but this is doubtful. Old St. Paul's was burnt down in 
l'it)(i, and rebuilt from Wren's designs. 



The City and the East End 

employed at these theatres, first as prompter 
and afterwards as actor, and went with the 
Burbages when they pulled down their Shore- 
ditch house and built the round O at Bankside. 
Curtain Court, now Hewett Street, marks the 
site of one of these houses : the site of the 
other is supposed to have been destroyed by 
the making of the railway line, but one can 
stand near the reputed site still. 



65 



CHAPTER IV 

THE GREENERY OF LONDON 

" fT^HE stony streets of London " was once 
J- a term of reproach constantly levelled 
against our city. De Quincey, thinking of his 
days of poverty and loneliness, writes of Oxford 
Street as his " stony-hearted mother," and the 
idea was current with country people that 
London was one vast waste of bricks and mortar, 
the ghastly opposite of the countryside, where 
no blade of grass or lonely tree was allowed? 
even if it could, to flourish. This was never 
true, though it had its foundation in a general 
dirtiness, dulness, and neglect. At any rate 
the opposite is true now. London rivals Paris 
in its brightness, gaiety, and green. There is 
hardly any district where, within the compass 
of a few streets, we do not find trees, grass, and 
flowers, and perhaps even some public garden 
66 




e 






The Greenery of London 

in which to breathe clearer air and refresh the 
eyes with the colours of nature. 

London has two parks which for size and 
variety equal, if they do not surpass, those of any 
provincial town. Even Londoners do not always 
realize that they can take something approach- 
ing a seven- mile walk on or near green grass, 
and only cross a street twice in doing it. Let the 
walker start from Storey's Gate at the south-east 
corner of St. James's Park, keeping to the east 
and north of the water, and reaching the gate 
which leaves St. James's Park near the Victoria 
Memorial. The crossing of the Mall will bring 
him to the eastern side of the Green Park, and 
so to the gate in Piccadilly opposite to Devon- 
shire House. The way lies on the north side 
just inside the Park railings till Hyde Park 
Corner is reached, when the crossing of the road 
near Apsley House will lead by the eastern 
paths up to the Marble Arch. A walk along 
the north side of the Park and Kensington 
Gardens will bring the Broad Walk into view, 
and by way of the south side of the Gardens 
and the Park, Hyde Park Corner will be 
67 



Things Seen in London 

reached. By the western and southern sides of 
the Green Park and St. James's Park return is 
made to the starting-point. The man who 
takes this walk daily need not suffer from the 
ills which wait upon want of exercise. 

Of the three royal parks in the centre of 
London, Hyde Park may be said to excel for 
fashion and oratory, the Green Park for loafers, 
and St. James's Park for birds. Hyde Park is 
London's largest luno^. It is the resort of the 
idle, and the happy hunting-ground of the 
stump orator. It is sad or amusing, as you 
happen to regard it, to hear the raucous voices 
of the Park orators on a summer Sunday 
evening. Here is at any rate a man with a 
spice of humour who advocates " Back to the 
land "; here a genuine enthusiast for a nostrum 
who expounds his reasons for holding that the 
world is flat ; while a quiet and interesting 
speaker tells thrillingly of the enormities of the 
kings of the House of Stuart and their unhappy 
histories. From the area of stump oration a 
short walk westward brings one to the "Dogs' 
Cemetery," one of the most touching of 
68 



The Greenery of London 

London's graveyards. Miniature gravestones 
tell the story of animal faithfulness and human 
affection, often in the most endearing terms, 
and one is led to hope that those who have 
suffered from the loss of their " dear beasts " 
may turn their grief to practical sympathy for 
the countless stray dogs and cats who roam, in 
terror, hunger, and danger, the endless streets. 
For such, each street is fraught with some fresh 
terror, and they must be convinced, if their 
little hearts can understand, of the iniquity of 
those who have drawn them from their wild 
state and habits of self-preservation and capacity 
for defence, only to subject them to the hope- 
lessness of the unfriendly streets, or to send 
them to the vivisector's knife. Where are the 
rescue workers for the London strays ? They 
can be numbered on the fingers of one's hands. 
Hyde Park is the place for an alfresco tea at 
the Ring Tea House, which is on the site of 
the old fashionable circle of the eighteenth 
century. Kensington Gardens has a larger 
area devoted to the same entertainment, with 
a delightful view of the Serpentine and the 
69 



Things Seen in London 

fountains at its northern end. Fashion has its 
definite times and places in Hyde Park, and a 
Sunday in full season at the time of Church 
parade will give the stranger within our gates 
some idea of the dress and customs of London's 
most fashionable crowd. Here are the best- 
dressed men and women in London, perhaps in 
the world. 

St. James's Park is still the home of "a 
great varietie of fowle," successors of those who, 
after the Restoration, were encouraged and fed 
by the royal hand. Birdcage Walk takes its 
name from the cages hung along it for the 
King's birds, while the ornamental water, then 
a straight canal, witnessed the introduction and 
enjoyment of skating by the cavaliers who had 
become proficient in it during their involuntary 
exile in Holland. The Mall on the north side 
takes its name from a favourite game of the 
Stuart Kings, and it was along it on his way 
from St. James's Palace to the scaffold that 
Charles I. walked on the morning of his execu- 
tion. Spring Gardens, once a gay pleasure 
resort of the merry Court, is now associated, 
70 




[ Koaak 
QIIEKN VICTOHIA JIEMOHIAL 
From tic . .i-e of St. James's Park. Ihe Memorial was unveiled in 1911. 



The Greenery of London 

until such time as their new hall be ready, with 
the labours of the L.C.C. clerks. The wide 
open space between the Park and the Horse 
Guards, once the tilting-yard of the Tudor 
Kings, is now more or less deserted, except 
when some public function, in which military 
display forms a great feature, such as the 
King's Birthday celebration, brings crowds of 
people to fill its wide spaces. 

Regent's Park was part of the scheme which 
gave us Regent Street and Waterloo Place, 
joining up the Regent's palace, Carlton House, 
with this new park created for his diversion 
and named after him. It is not one of the 
most attractive of the royal parks, and were it 
not for the Botanical and, above all, the Zoo- 
logical Gardens it would have few visitors, 
except the few residents with their dogs, the 
people who go there for the sake of the boating, 
and the youngsters who love cricket. 

Many other parks under the control of the 

London County Council are scattered about the 

London area : Battersea Park for cricket, with 

the river flowing along its northern side, and 

71 



Things Seen in London 

rows of imposing flats which have earned from 
a popular writer the name of " Intellectual 
Mansions,^' overlooking it upon the south ; 
Victoria Park for religious debates and air for 
the East Enders ; Southwark Park as a breath- 
ing-place for the crowded thousands of South 
London. 

Dickens justly complained in his day of the 
dreariness and danger of the old burial-grounds 
scattered about London, but a wonderful trans- 
formation has been effected in this direction as 
a result, in part, of his continual protest. Now 
cleared, levelled, with graves filled in, and head- 
stones reared against the side-walls, bright 
with flowers and fitted with benches, they afford 
a resting-place and a refuge to thousands of the 
tired or homeless ones as well as to the inhabi- 
tants in their localities. Some of them, as is 
the case at Christ's Church, Spitalfields, are 
devoted entirely to children, and one of the dis- 
tinctive notes of that locality is the finding of 
the daintily dressed little ones who hardly 
speak a word of English at play by the old 
tombs, while the business of the great fruit- 
72 







[ A cxtak 



HOI I'KN HOW 



A fa nous sand track for riders, especially before breakfast. The footpaths 
are the favourite rendezvous on Sundays for church parade. 



The Greenery of London 

market employs their parents across the way. 
Another notable transformation has been 
effected at St. Anne's, Soho, where perhaps the 
only grave that remains unaltered (and even 
that has had its stone set up afar off) is that of 
Hazlitt, the essayist, who tried so hard, in 
death, to persuade Charles Lamb that he had 
had a good time in life. Many of the churches 
destroyed in the Great Fire were not rebuilt, 
but their churchyards remained, an eyesore in 
times gone by, but now mostly opened up as 
refuges from the roar and bustle of the city. 
A notable example of their present uses will be 
seen in such cases as St. Botolph, Aldersgate, 
known as the Postman's Park, because, being 
near to the old St. Martin's-le-Grand, it used to 
be of service to the employees who had a little 
time to spare in the dinner-hour. This is 
worth visiting were it only to see the tablets set 
up to commemorate the noble deeds of the 
poor. The frescoes across the water at Redcross 
Gardens in the Borough fulfil the same purpose. 
For some years past a consistent endeavour 
has been made to create boulevards along the 
73 



Things Seen in London 

banks of the Thames, while in certain wide and 
suitable streets such as the Brompton Road and 
along the highway at Acton and Turnham 
Green they are quite acclimatized. A stretch 
of embankment now runs, since the completion 
of the gardens adjoining the Victoria Tower, 
except where the wharves in Grosvenor Road 
break its line, in one continuous sweep from 
Blackfriars Bridge to beyond Chelsea Church. 
Trees are planted which flourish in the car- 
bonized air of liOndon and spread a grateful 
shade for many miles along the river bank. 
Adjacent to some of the busiest parts for busi- 
ness, such as the Strand and Fleet Street, it yet 
touches all kinds of residential life during its 
long course. On the south bank of the Thames 
only a small portion of the river has been 
embanked, extending from Westminster Bridge 
to near Vauxhall Bridge and known as thei 
Albert Embankment. St. Thomas's Hospital^ 
erected here after the demolition of the old 
buildings which adorned the Borough, adds 
dignity and importance to this otherwise dull 
stretch of Thames — the haunt of trams, traffic-: 
74 



The Greenery of London 

carts, and barges with their rich brown sails 
lying by its walls. A fine view is gained from 
this embankment, almost the whole way, of the 
Houses of Parliament, the Tate Gallery, and 
Westminster Abbey rising behind the trees of 
the Victoria Tower Gardens. Here also is 
Lambeth Palace, with the Morton Tower look- 
ing away towards Doulton's and Vauxhall. Seen 
in certain lights from the other side as a grey 
silhouette with its trail of smoke, Doulton"'s 
is quite Whistlerian in character and one of 
London's most delightful effects. 

London has always had its places of alfresco 
entertainment, whether it be Ranelagh, Vaux- 
hall, Cremorne, or the White City and EarPs 
Court of to-day. It may interest the passer-by 
to know that when he stands on the south end of 
Vauxhall Bridge and looks towards the South- 
western Station that the well-populated dis- 
trict to the east and south of the Station 
covers the site of the old Vauxhall Gardens. 
Several of the street names indicate this, such 
as Tyers Street, taking its title from the 
family name of the last proprietor of the 

1. 



Things Seen in London 

Gardens. The place of all others at the 
present time where we can see London giving; 
itself over entirely to open-air amusement is, 
of course, Hampstead Heath. Bank Holiday f 
on Hampstead Heath never grows out of date; 
nor the fun less energetic. For three hundred 
and sixty-two days in the year this quietest oft 
suburbs is dignified, literary, and artistic, the 
abode of ladies'* schools and excellent homes fori 
consumption, but on the remaining days Satur-- 
nalia spread wide over its borders and good- 
liumoured fun and revelry hold the field. 

No sooner is the station left behind than thei 
fun begins. There is a crescendo of amusement,, 
but the first notes are chastened and quiet. The ! 
sightless eyes of the fat cheerful man with the: 
fat cheerful dog have not the reproach ofi 
the ordinary blind beggar. This cheerful man 
smokes a cheerful pipe in front of a cheerful 
red-brick wall, and his appeal, if any, is ini 
festive mood. Then follow the opportunities! 
for having your fortune and your character 
told before you brave the dangers of the Heath 
itself. Face, eyes, hands, or handwriting, will 
76 



The Greenery of London 

give you away e([ually to these experts. The 
yellows and reds, in their cheerful gaiety, of 
the robes which cover the magician's shoulders 
are worth the modest penny as notes of colour, 
apart quite from the excellent character with 
its little compliments in the form of warnings 
that you receive on the mysterious red paper 
with blue markings. In a lane where level 
ground is reached the itinerant photographer, 
with a camera like a miniature 4'7 gun, places 
your portrait in your buttonhole in a trice. 
Thus made self-respecting and expectant, you 
venture on the Heath itself. 

Down by the Vale of Health the swings are 
aswinging with such vigour that the eye will 
hardly bear even to look at them, while all and 
sundry at the cocoanut-shies are apparently 
(certainly only apparently !) taking all the 
profit from the gipsy owner by skill of marks- 
manship. By the rows of booths on the hill- 
side all is animation : try-your-strengths, houp- 
ia, fancy goods, the Piccadilly eyeglass, the 
jolly ticklers, pineapple chunks, and tea of the 
Bank Holiday variety, are offered on all hands. 
77 



Things Seen in London 

Away there across the grass you can visit 
the dwarf and his wife, whose carriage, about ! 
the size of your footstool, is waiting outside to 
draw your attention. Here is the newest Bank 
Holiday cinema, showing films suited to the 
customers. The wild-beast show, the sparring 
booth, attract a crowd of spectators, and sq 
does the lineal descendant of the old English 
travelling variety show, with the young lady in 
spangles, the highly painted clown, and the 
man with the big drum outside. 

Amidst all the fun of the fair and close to 
the constant rattle of cocoanut -shies, we are 
brought back to another side of life by the 
sight of the ambulance tent, the nurses, andl 
the waiting stretchers, while across the grass 
towards Parliament Hill the police tent is 
waiting to receive lost children, of whom there 
are no inconsiderable number every Bank 
Holiday. 

Out on the roadway at the top of Heath 

Street or farther east by The Spaniards dancing 

is the order of the day, and literally for hours 

at a time the figures in wonderful clothes with 

78 



The Greenery of London 

bone buttons and ladies in velvet costumes with 
stupendous hats and feathers are footing it 
opposite one another to the strains of the 
barrel-organ or the gay little band. 

All is gaiety and gladness, and the grey life 
of everyday can be for once clean forgotten as 
though it never existed. Life, really gay glad 
life is here, and the East End murk and the 
early rising and the late overtime and the dull 
streets, thank God, are for a time forgotten. 



79 



CHAPTER V 

HISTORIC HOUSES 

WHILE so much of old London is disap- 
pearing day by day at the hands of the 
housebreaker that one is never sure that flats 
will not spring up in Temple Gardens or villas in 
Hyde Park, or that the Tower will not come down 
to accommodate some City bank, it is comforting 
to remember that a great deal still remains to 
show us what London used to be like, and that we 
can point with pride and satisfaction to many 
old houses, associated with men of light and 
leading in the past and with the real happenings 
of London. 

The nineteenth century witnessed a perfect 
furor of destruction, which still continues, and 
which swept away more historic houses and 
buildings than the city lost in the Great Fire. 
Still no week, no day even, passes without its 
80 




P/toto] 



[L. N. A. 



FLEET STREET 

The greatest centre of journalism in the world. 



Historic Houses 

work of destruction. Literary and historic 
interest, association with England's leaders in 
camp or Court, unique architectural interest, 
avail not to stop the destroyer bent on acquiring 
fresh space to build offices for the modern man 
to grow rich in. 

Dr. Johnson occupied many different houses 
during his London life, and they have all been 
swept away but one, and that has only been 
saved, after many risks, at the eleventh hour : 
17, Gough Square has now been made safe, and 
has been adapted as a Johnson Museum. In it 
he completed and sent off the final proofs of the 
" Dictionary "' with a covering letter to Andrew 
Millar, saying he thanked God he had done 
with it, receiving in reply the well-known 
communication : " Mr. Andrew Millar begs to 
acknowledge the receipt of Dr. Johnson's letter 
with the final proofs of the Dictionary. He is 
pleased to note that Dr. Johnson has the grace to 
thank God for anything."" The two top rooms 
— then one large room, and recently made so 
again — are said to have been occupied by the 
amanuenses who copied out the extracts selected 
8i F 



Things Seen in London 

by Johnson as suitable to illustrate the 
meanings of the different words. It was while 
living here that he lost his beloved " Tetty,'' 
ugly and uninteresting to everybody else, but 
best beloved and beautiful always to him, and 
whose memory he never ceased to revere andl 
cherish to the end of his life. j 

Middle Temple Lane across Fleet Street t 
recalls Johnson's sojourn there in a house now 
demolished, and the midnight visit of Tophami 
Beauclerk to draw the old Doctor from his bed I 
for an all-night frolic. Other Johnson associa-- 
tions are to be met with across the river at Bar- 
clay's Brewery, owned in the eighteenth century\ 
by Thrale, whose handsome wife was until 
the Piozzi marriatre a firm friend of Johnsonj 
After Thrale's untimely death he was executoi 
for the business, and the Brewery has preserved 
as relics of this association the chair in whichl 
he sat and the old knocker from one of his 
London residences. This knocker is, curiousl} 
enough, an exact replica of the one on his housfi 
in Gough Square, so the pattern must have! 
been a fairly common one. Hoare's Bank hai 
82 



Historic Houses 

displaced the Mitre, loved by Johnson and his 
literary circle. 

Charles Lamb is more fortunate than Johnson, 
and many of his old haunts and houses can still 
be visited. In the Temple can be seen the 
block of buildings, Crown Office Row, in which 
he was born and where his father, the Lovell of 
the Essays, was factotum to Samuel Salt, the 
Bencher of the Inner Temple. As a child he 
looked out on and played in the gardens before the 
windows, and the lovely old gateway erected just 
before he was born must have been well known 
to him. The shell of the house at the corner of 
Russell Street and Drury Lane is still shown to 
which he removed from the Temple, and where 
Mary found amusement in watching the passers- 
by and in seeing the prisoners being conveyed 
to Bow Street Police Station. Colebrooke 
Cottage, Islington, still stands, though the New 
River, which then flowed at the foot of the 
garden, has ])een covered in since the day that 
the amiable but absent-minded George Dyer 
played the almost tragic part described in Elia's 
essav entitled " Amicus Redivivus." Dver 



Things Seen in London 

lodged in Clifford's Inn, Fleet Street, which can 
still be visited, with its fine old hall, which 
housed Chief Justice Hale and the special 
Board of Judges who delimited property and 
settled disputes arising out of the Great Fire. 
Dyer was married, whether he desired it or not 
(he probably had not thought of it), by his 
opposite neighbour, a widow, who proposed to 
him, for his good, in the following terms : " I 
am sure it will be good for you, Mr. Dyer, to 
have someone to look after you." It is pleasing 
to be assured that she made him an excellent 
wife. Lamb's last home, the cottage at 
Edmonton, can still be visited, and so can the 
quiet grave in the churchyard where the gentle 
Elia (as he objected to be called) lies under a 
flowery bed of old English blossoms of forget- 
me-not and wallflower. But the grave has a 
forlorn appearance, and few people, except 
Americans, seem to visit it. A double memorial 
has been placed in the adjoining church to 
Lamb and Cowper — the excuse for dragging in 
the latter seems a very thin one, that Edmonton 



Historic Houses 

was the place to which John Gilpin did not 
turn up to dinner as previously arranged. 

The Church of St. Dunstan in the West, close 
to Clifford's Inn, is new, but the tower of the 
church is very picturesque as seen from the Inn 
garden, and is supposed to be the one from 
which, as feigned by Dickens in " The Chimes," 
their music rang out over the busy street below. 
At any rate, in the Temple Garden across the 
way Ruth Pinch used to wait for her brother 
Tom, while the " liquid music " of the water of 
the fountain in Fountain Court, then as now, 
flowed sweetly on. 

Reynolds is fortunate, for, though his studio 
has gone to make way for an auction room, its 
site is still shown and the house of which it 
formed part. It occupies the centre of the 
western side of Leicester Square, and remains 
much as it was in his day. Reynolds's reception 
rooms, now empty, used to be in the occupation 
of the Cambridge University Musical Club. 
The staircase, with its arched balustrading, the 
open space before the rounded doorways of the 
big room, set the stage for the figures of Sir 
85. 



Things Seen in London 

Joshua and his little sister standing to receive 
as guests his distinguished friends and sitters — 
in fact, all the people of light and leading in 
his time. In the opposite south-east corner of 
the Square, for some, at least, of Sir Joshua's 
time, the little man in the sky-blue coat, 
Hogarth, occupied the Van Dyck Head, and 
there his widow continued to reside for some 
time after his death. The busts of Reynolds 
and Hogarth adorn two of the four corners of 
the Leicester Square Gardens. 

Of Goldsmith, another of the circle of 
eighteenth-century immortals, we have not 
many visible traces left in London. We should 
like to find the farmhouse where he was lodging 
" out Hendon way " when he was writing 
" She Stoops to Conquer," and came down- 
stairs to retail his latest jokes to his landlady, 
who only half understood them or her strange 
guest, but who was reassured when company 
from London, perhaps Reynolds and Johnson, 
found her curious lodger very good company 
indeed. At any rate, we can see Canonbury 
Tower in Islington, where " The Deserted 
86 




rt!£ 



Historic Houses 

Village '' and part of " The Vicar of Wakefield '' 
were written, and visit the lonely grave in the 
Temple, hard by his lodgings still remaining, 
with the simple inscription : " Here lies Oliver 
Goldsmith/' The epitaph is too emphatic, for 
no one can be certain, since no official record 
was at the time kept, of the actual place of 
interment. Wherever the spot was, it was 
bedewed with the tears of those poor and lorn 
friends of his, widows and suchlike, very friend- 
less ones otherwise, to whom he acted the Good 
Samaritan when he needed, not only a helping 
hand, but often the necessaries of life, for 
himself. 

Within a minute's walk of this sacred spot, 
situated over the entrance to the Temple, is 
the old house, 1 7, Fleet Street, associated with 
Henry, Prince of Wales, in James I.'s time. 
The house has been most admirably restored by 
the united efforts of the L.C.C. and the City 
Corporation, and is one of the best examples of 
a seventeenth-century house that we have in 
London. The principal room used by Prince 
Henry for transacting the business of the 

87 



Things Seen in London 

Duchy of Cornwall has one of the finest 
ceilings yet left in situ in London, with the 
Prince of Wales's feathers and the initials P. H. 
upon it. The walls retain a considerable 
quantity of their excellent old oak carving. 
This room is visible gratis during the middle 
hours of every day in the week except Sundays. 
Walking up Chancery Lane and passing the 
famous Tudor Gate of Lincoln's Inn, the 
celebrated Staple Inn of Holborn will be easily 
reached. It is a comfort to know that at any 
rate it has fallen into the hands of those who 
have both the money and the inclination to 
keep it as it is, and preserve for London one of 
its most notable Tudor buildings. Johnson is 
supposed to have written " Rasselas " here to 
pay the expenses of his mother's funeral, while 
Dickens has sent every visitor to gaze at No. 10, 
which has a stone tablet with initials and date. 
Here he placed Mr. Grewgious in " Edwin 
Drood," and of it he writes : " The turning into 
it from the dashing street imparts to the relieved 
pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton- 
wool in his ears and velvet soles on his boots." 




[Kodak 
THi; GEOUGK INN, HOKOKiH HIGH STUtLT 
The only ancient Southwark Inn of which any traces have survived. 



Historic Houses 

No one sees Staple Inn without trying to 
realize what the quaintness and beauty of old 
London must have been when every house was 
akin to this one. Probably the Gate was 
there and newly built when the young Shake- 
speare was bringing his long walk from 
Warwickshire to an end, and wondering as he 
passed it what fate was in store for him in that 
great London which he was just about to enter. 

So picturesque and so suitable to play the 
part it claims is "The Old Curiosity Shop" 
in Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, that 
everyone will regret that it has not a better 
claim to be regarded as the one which Dickens 
had in his eye when he fixed on the title for 
his tale. 

Few resting-places of literary men are more 
pathetic than that of Laurence Sterne (Tristram 
Shandy) in the old disused burial-ground of 
St. George's, Hanover Square, which is in 
Bayswater Road facing the Park. It has been 
laid out as a public garden, but a few special 
graves have been left in situ, including his. It 
is near the centre of the west wall ; it has two 
89 



Things Seen in London 

stones fully inscribed — one at the head and the 
other at the foot of the actual grave. Dying 
in poor lodgings, without a friend near him in 
his last hours, and with the footman of one 
of his gay friends waiting for the end in order 
to be able to go home and report to his master, 
who had a supper-party, that all was over, he 
was not allowed to rest even in death, since the 
body was stolen by the Resurrection men and 
sold for dissection. Recognized by the man 
about to demonstrate on the corpse, it was 
restored to its grave. The Chapel of the Ascen- 
sion, through which the burial-ground is 
reached, is decorated with paintings, and is 
open for rest and quiet at all reasonable times. 
In the midst of the towering houses which here 
face the Park will be found a curiosity in the 
smallest house in London, which consists simply 
of a small entrance hall and one room above. 
Its appearance is sufficiently strange hi com- 
parison with its consequential neighbours. 

It may not be generally known that quite 
recently, owing to the energies of Dr. H. E. 
90 



Historic Houses 

Sieveking, son of the late Sir E. Sieveking, 
physician to Queen Victoria, a brass exactly 
the shape of the original triple tree at Tyburn 
has been let into the roadway where Oxford 
Street and Edgware Road meet. It will be 
found to the south-west of the island at the 
junction of the two roads. 

Of the old houses in London used as inns 
there is one still surviving in the Borough High 
Street. The George is most interesting on 
account of having retained at any rate some 
portion of its old galleries. This is almost a 
typical " Dickens '' Inn, and the only one still 
preserving its old characteristics. One can, as one 
visits the old bedrooms opening on the galleries, 
imagine Mr. Pickwick emerging from the door 
of one of them and calling into the yard to Sam 
Weller, engaged in his amusing soliloquy on 
the boots from the various numbers. Here, in 
what still resembles a real old-fashioned coffee 
room, are high bench seats and a big-faced 
Parliament clock. Another interesting inn in 
the Borough is the Half Moon, notable on 
91 



Things Seen in London 

account of the passage carried over the yard and 
the old stone sign let into the wall of the stable. 
This inn was flourishing in the time of Hogarth 
and its hanging sign will be noticed on the left- 
hand side of his picture of " Southwark Fair/' 
The nineteenth century saw the destruction of 
a large number of the most interesting and 
primitive of the old inns of London, of which 
there were a very large number surviving at the 
beginning of that century. The Dick Whit- 
tington in the Cloth Fair claimed to have been 
built in the fifteenth century, ,and has only 
recently been destroyed, and the site remains 
like an empty eye-socket still vacant. 

Numbers of old houses, especially in Berkeley 
Square, have the old brackets and extinguishers 
connected with the oil lighting of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries still existing at 
the front door. A remarkably fine doorway and 
excellent iron work with brackets and extin- 
guisher will be found outside the Nurses' Home 
of the Children's Hospital in Great Ormond 
Street, and, of course, the old houses in Queen 
92 



Historic Houses 

Anne's Gate, perhaps still " a home of ancient 
peace," are remarkable for their consistency of 
appearance, the fine row of masks depicting the 
human face under the influence of various 
emotions under the first-floor windows, and 
the excellent series of doorways and hoods, 
all different, but all worthy of considerable 
attention. 

It is characteristic of London that there are 
in various districts strange survivals of a state of 
things in happy contrast to the congestion of 
the present time. We may find, for example, 
as we do in Glebe Place, Chelsea, a real old 
whitewashed cottage flanked by huge flats and 
modern studios — the entrance gate, we are told 
it was, to a stately country mansion that once 
occupied a place in the garden at the end of 
this street. There exists quite a typical Essex 
cottage, with its brick lower-story woodwork 
and red-tile upper stories amidst a congested 
dock area at Limehouse, and in Westminster 
there used to be another, this time whitewashed 
and standing quite apart, and it is not so long 
93 



Things Seen in London 

ago that one read in the paper of the comi. ^j 
destruction of London's last surviving West End] 
farmhouse, which had its place in the heart of: 
the premises of a great furnishing business ini 
Tottenham Court Road. 



94 



CHAPTER VI 
HISTORICAL RELICS IN THE STREETS 

"VTOT only does London still abound in 
J^ 1 houses of historic interest, but has 
managed in a remarkable degree to preserve 
from destruction some of the smaller historical 
relics which tell a tale of times and customs 
long past away. Most of them are quite 
unknown to the people who throng the streets, 
but they must certainly find their place amongst 
the " things seen in London." 

The shop signs which have escaped destruc- 
tion recall the time when the houses had not 
been numbered, and the dealer relied solely 
upon some sign which he chose as represen- 
tative of his firm in order to bring the position 
of his house in a particular street to the 
knowledge or remembrance of his customers. 
95 



Things Seen in London 

A few of these old emblems are still in common 
use, such as the civet-cat for children's toys 
(not so common as it was), the striped pole for 
the barber, and the arm with a hand grasping a 
hammer for the gold-beaters, while, of course, 
almost universally, houses of public entertain- 
ment keep their signs. 

Shop signs were of two kinds. In one case 
the sign was pendant over the pathway, stand- 
ing out from the house, painted on both sides, 
and easily seen by the passers-by up and down 
the street. This was not very convenient, 
though it persisted as a type for a long time, 
since it made a gruesome groaning and creaking 
as it swung in the wind, collected the rain- 
water and conveyed it on to the heads of the 
passers-by, and after years of use got rusted and 
probably fell upon the heads of the passengers. 
It gave place, especially after the Great Fire, 
to signs of stone let into the fronts of the 
houses, which, if not so attractive, at any rate 
were of a safer and more enduring type. 

A fine example of the pendant sign is 
observable in Blackfriars Bridge Road, the 

96 



\ 




ALDWYCH 



US fine crescent as only a^few years ago occupied by a rookery of sordid 
streets and slums. , 



Historical Relics in the Streets 

sign of the dog with his head in the pot. It is 
boldly and skilfully modelled, and, as it has 
now been, most inappropriately, gilded, it is 
a very prominent object. The pot is of 
iron and the sign that of an ironmonger, 
though it was by no means in old days con- 
sidered inappropriate to put it over the house 
of a bad housewife, during whose gossiping 
excursions the dog may have succeeded in 
getting his head into the pot containing his 
master's dinner. 

Other excellent examples of the hanging 
sign are preserved in two old Fleet Street Banks 
— Child's and Gosling's. Child's sign, pre- 
served with great care through the years, is 
the marigold. It is an oak board painted 
green, and the sun and marigold well executed, 
with the motto : " Ainsi mon ame.'' It can 
be seen by application to the manager at the 
Bank. Gosling's sign is hung in the front 
office, and can be seen by all who have 
business there. It is of copper, and the three 
squirrels are well modelled on it. They also 
appear chasing each other round the ironwork 
97 G 



Things Seen in London 

which protects the window of the Bank looking 
out on Fleet Street. 

Of stone signs for the fronts of houses there 
are many excellent examples extant. A 
specially fine specimen is preserved in the 
office of Alexander's Bank in Lombard Street 
(though not originally belonging to that site), 
and is known as the " Fox and Brush," and 
dates from 1669. It is a fine piece of modelling 
and a highly decorative object. A less con- 
spicuous but highly interesting sign will be 
found in the front of No. 71, a house next to 
the George Inn, in High Street, Borough. It is 
known as the " Hare and Sun." It still 
occupies its original position, though the house 
has been gutted by fire. Like most of these 
signs, it has the initials of the owner of the 
house or maker of the sign and his wife and 
the date, in this case '' H and NA, 1676." 

There is a figure of a boy carved in wood I 
and gilded, and of very corpulent dimensions,, 
outside a house in Giltspur Street, at the 
corner of Cock Lane, where the ghost called 
" Scratching Fanny " earned so great but 
98 



Historical Relics in the Streets 

ephemeral notoriety in the eighteenth century. 
The angle is known as Pie Corner, and there in 
this direction the Fire of London is believed 
to have been arrested. The sign is generally 
supposed to be intended to mark this fact, for 
the old saying was that the fire began in 
Pudding Lane and ended at Pie Corner, and it 
also gave point to the generally accepted idea 
that the fire originated through the greediness 
of a fat boy at the King's baker's in trying to 
get an apple-tart from the oven, and so releas- 
ing the flames which started that stupendous 
conflagration. 

Another emblem of a similar kind exists 
in Panyer Alley, which joins Newgate Street 
with Paternoster Row. It represents a naked 
boy sitting on a panyer or bread-basket, and 
beneath are the lines, 

" When you liave sought the city round 
This is still the highest ground," 

and the date August 27, 1688. As the sig^n 
has been moved, its statement is not now 
accurate. It had probably some connection 
with the bread market, which was confined to 
99 



Things Seen in London 

one spot in this locality, for the panyers were 
the receptacles in which the bread was carried. 
Public-house signs in London are often of 
considerable antiquity, and bear reference to 
matters of historical interest. In Hays Mews, 
at the back of the west side of Berkeley Square, 
there is a public-house with an old painted 
sign representing one of the running footmen 
who, before the advent of the man in blue, 
were responsible for making a way for their 
master's carriage through the congested traffic 
of the narrow streets. He is represented as 
suitably clad and armed with his staff for 
enforcing his claims. It is satisfactory to learn 
that in the enlarged end of the staff there was 
a cavity protected by a screwed top and con- 
taining solid and liquid refreshment. In Queen 
Anne's Gate is a public-house with the sign 
of " The Two Chairmen." It is most appro- 
priately situated near those old residences 
before the doors of which the chairmen of the 
sedan-chairs used to deposit their passengers, 
before retiring to this same house for their own 
entertainment. 

lOO 



Historical Relics in the Streets 

Of the convivial centres of old days two 
excellent examples remain in Fleet Street. 
"The Cocke Inn,"' mentioned by Pepys, beloved 
of Johnson, and visited by Tennyson, used 
to open its hospitable doors on the north side, 
but the original building being pulled down to 
make way for the Law Courts it migrated 
to the south side and farther east, taking its old 
sign, its fireplace, and its old oak seats to fresh 
i|uarters. The latter are put up in the upstairs 
room, while the rampant old cock disports 
himself on a bracket in the downstairs dining- 
room. The insignificant bird that does duty 
outside in Fleet Street is merely an unworthy 
replica of the original. Little hesitation need 
be felt in accepting the suggestion that the old 
fireplace was well known to Johnson and his 
circle, and that they warmed themselves at it 
on many a wintry day. 

The other notable hostelry in Fleet Street is 
" The Cheshire Cheese."" It possesses a portrait 
of Dr. Johnson, and claims to have had him as 
a constant patron, since it shows his well-worn 
seat. This may have been so — there is no 

lOI 



Things Seen in London 

evidence to the contrary — but, at any rate the 
proprietors are doing a good work in keeping 
up in its old style, and with accurate surround- 
ings and accessories, one of the genuine old 
inns of Dr. Johnson's time. The pudding 
served by the host himself on several days in 
the week is one of the gargantuan feasts of 
London. Every visitor and Londoner should 
have experience of it. It has no rival. 

Scattered about in various districts will 
be found examples of the old traffic posts, 
which, before the introduction of the pavement, 
endeavoured to retain some small portion of 
the way for the benefit of pedestrians. Excel- 
lent examples, some of them genuine, of old 
cannon remain on Tower Hill ; examples of 
two different kinds surround the green enclosure 
of Westminster Abbey, while excellent speci- 
mens admirably preserved are in Middle Temple 
Lane. 

London still possesses a specimen of the old 
travellers' rests put up by the benevolent, 
before the days of cabs and carrying agents, 
as a boon to porters. Few visitors and not 

I02 



Historical Relics in the Streets 

many Londoners realize how steep are the hills 
in Piccadilly, but the porters who had to carry 
loads up towards what was then the turnpike 
near St. George's Hospital knew well enough, 
and were glad to rest their loads upon the 
wooden support which still remains near a 
cabstand on the south side a little east of Park 
Lane. A suitable inscription tells something 
of its history. 

Near here, and just off Berkeley Street, Lans- 
downe Passage can be found, a narrow way 
between high walls which contain the gardens 
of Lansdowne and Devonshire Houses. At 
either end an iron bar obstructs the passage, 
and thereby hangs a tale. It appears that 
a highwayman was at work in Piccadilly reliev- 
ing people of their watches and their money, 
till, happening to get tired of it, they raised 
the hue-and-cry, at which he jumped on his 
horse and rode for safety. Dashing up 
Berkeley Street and seeing this passage, which 
was not then barred, he put his horse at it, 
galloped in safety through, and by way of 
Curzon Street escaped into the open fields. 
103 



Things Seen in London 

Fearing a repetition of this, the authorities 
erected the iron bars to close the way to horses, 
and to this day the passengers in Piccadilly can 
proceed about their business in complete assur- 
ance that no highwayman will escape through 
Berkeley Street and Lansdowne Passage to the 
open. 

Old street name-plates are too numerous 
to deal with, but reference may perhaps be 
made to one, of unusual interest on account 
of its position, in James Street, Hay market. 
It has an elaborate border, is of stone, and 
let into the wall of a famous building. At any 
rate, the shell of this house, now in possession 
of a well-known publisher, enclosed Shavers 
Hall and the Tennis Court in which Charles II. 
and his brother James, Duke of York, with 
now and then the Duke of Monmouth, used to 
play tennis, and play exceedingly well, according 
to Pepys, though Charles himself easily surpassed 
all others in skill. 

Of all the small relics in the London streets 
none can perhaps compare in interest and 
importance with London Stone. It used to 
I04 




00 se 

CO eo 






g "-SS. 



o 









Historical Relics in the Streets 

stand by the south side of Cannon Street, but 
since 1742 has been fixed into the wall of 
St. Swithin's Church on the north side opposite 
Cannon Street Station. It is now well protected 
from injury by an iron grille, and is somewhat 
hidden in consequence. It is supposed, on the 
best authority, to have marked the centre of 
the Roman road system of Britain in the same 
way that a similar kind of mark, in the Forum 
at Rome, gave centre for the roads of Italy. 
From its great age and prominent position 
it came to have a kind of representative 
character, and to be held in repute much as the 
Stone of Scone was in Scotland. 

Of the large and important nobles' houses 
which once lined the Strand from Westminster 
to the City we have hardly any traces remain- 
ing, except two of the great water-gates which 
gave from their gardens to the river. It shows 
how far the river has been thrust back from its 
former limits that these two gates, up to which 
in old times the barges used to come to land 
their passengers, are some considerable distance 
from the edge of the Embankment. One of 
105 



Things Seen in London 

these water-gates, known as the York Gate, is 
in the Embankment Gardens at Charing Cross. 
It was built by Inigo Jones, and gave access 
to the mansion of George VilHers, Duke of 
Buckingham, the favourite of James I. and 
Charles I. Every student of history has read 
of the magnificent entertainments which were 
there given to the King and Court, and so 
perhaps this old gate has seen as much of the 
pageantry and splendour of the early Stuart 
Kings as any other spot now remaining in 
London. At the other end of the Strand, at 
the bottom of Essex Street — in fact, incorpor- 
ated into the houses which close the end of it — 
we get the gate of Essex House. It is not so 
impressive nor so clearly visible as the other, 
but can be easily made out when looked for. 
It is really more visible for what it is when 
looked at from the Embankment near to the 
Astor Estate office. It was from this house 
that the favourite of Elizabeth started on his 
ill-fated expedition to try and rouse the city 
against the ill-advisers of the Queen who had 
supplanted him . Hemmed in in the City, he had 
io6 



Historical Relics in the Streets 

to return by water and reach his house through 
this gate, only to be taken on surrender 
through the same gate to Lambeth House, and 
so to the Tower and his execution. 

Lord Essex is commemorated near by in 
Devereux Court, where a bust of him is fixed 
high up on the walls of what is now an office, 
but was formerly the Grecian Coffee House. 
In the days when each Coffee House had its own 
habitues, and men of one way of thinking or 
one profession frequented the same house, the 
" Grecian " (so-called from the founder being a 
Greek called Constantine) was the rendezvous 
of the wits and beaux of the Temple, and Steele 
tells us in the first number of the Tatler, when 
he is humorously describing from what centres 
the different articles in his paper will be 
dictated, that "all accounts of learning shall 
be under the title of ' The Grecian/ '' 

It would hardly be expected that we should 

have scattered about London several interesting 

relics of old London Bridge, yet such is the 

case. One of the alcoves is in the gardens of 

107 



Things Seen in London 

Guy's Hospital, and may be seen any day 
affording shelter for the convalescent patients 
who are taking the air there, while an excellent 
carved medallion of the Royal Arms, which used 
to adorn the front of the southern side of the 
Bridge, will be found used as the sign, or at any 
rate let into the wall, of a public-house in 
Newcomen Street, off High Street, Borough. 
Parts of the stone window tracery of the Chapel 
of St. Thomas a Becket are used as the coping 
of a garden in front of the caretaker's house in 
a builder's yard in Islington. 

The City still boasts two famous wells. The 
one by the Royal Exchange is now used as a 
place of call for thirsty horses. The iron 
standard is foursquare, and has an inscription 
to the effect that on this spot a well was made 
and a house of correction built in 1282; further- 
more that it was enlarged and the pump erected 
in 1799. It seems to have required, according 
to the inscription, the united efforts of the 
Bank of England, the East India Company, 
the neighbouring fire offices, and the bankers 
io8 



Historical Relics in the Streets 

and traders of the Ward of Cornhill, to erect 
this somewhat meagre edifice. Aldgate Pump 
is known to everyone, and is about the limit of 
the City man's walks eastward as of the East 
Ender's walk westward. Stow mentions it and 
the prison adjacent called the Aldgate Tun, 
because it had a resemblance to a large wine- 
cask set on end. It was primarily intended for 
the purification of the streets of the city. 
Close to it there existed an underground room, 
at times exposed, and on the last occasion 
visited by Mr. Philip Norman, who speaks of it 
as a fine chamber, though to what uses it was 
put no one seems to know. 

Charles Lamb states that he was moved to 
tears when he returned on one occasion to 
Fleet Street and found that the celebrated 
clock and figures of St. Dunstan's Church had 
been removed. It may not be known to every- 
one that this clock was not destroyed, but 
removed to St. Dunstan's Lodge in Regent's 
Park. Though it is in a private garden, the 
owner, and probably his tenants the blind 
109 



Things Seen in London 

soldiers, courteously allow visitors to see it, so 
at least one landmark of old Fleet Street is 
preserved to bring back to mind its former 
appearance. 

Few people would expect to find in the 
heart of London any relic of trusty Dick 
Penderel, who saved Charles II. during the 
flight from Worcester by secreting him in the 
Boscobel Oak, much less to come across in the 
churchyard of a London slum his gravestone : 
yet those who will turn off Oxford Street 
where it joins Tottenham Court Road, and 
walk along High Street, St. Giles, will come to 
the old parish church by which for many 
generations the carts rumbled, bearing the 
unfortunate condemned on their way to Tyburn 
Tree ; and in the churchyard now laid out as a 
public garden will see an altar tomb inscribed 
to " Trusty Dick Penderel, the Saviour of 
Charles II.'' It is said that he had come up to 
London to press for due recognition of his 
services, and for once to find the Merry 
Monarch not ungrateful, for he got his pension, 
no 



Historical Relics in the Streets 

when death most untimely overtook him. At 
any rate, here he rests among the worn-out 
wayfarers from the adjacent Soho w^ho make 
this church garden their place of quiet retreat 
from the noise and heat of their streets. 



Ill 



CHAPTER VII 
THE LIFE OF THE STREETS 

THERE is probably more to interest and 
fascinate the mind in a square mile of 
London than in fifty or a hundred square miles 
of average countryside. Not only are there 
houses of historic interest, the old signs and 
quaint relics of bygone days, people of note in 
every branch of human activity that we may 
rub shoulders with, but the motley tribe of 
those who see life from the gutter and get their 
living by those who never use it. Here we 
have the tradesmen who have no shop-fronts 
and the dealers who do not pay rent for their 
business premises. What queer trades some of 
them follow, and in what surprising ways they 
make a living ! The pavement does not know 
the gutter as it should, or it would be filled 
with surprise to find what good fellows there 

112 




L A odak 
ARCHWAY LEADING FROM CAREY STREET INTO NEW SQUARE, 

Lincoln's inn fields 

The square is on; of the largest in London, and laid out by Inigo Tones. 
Kefore being enclosed the fields were a favourite place for duelling, and a 
haunt of thieves. Lord John Russell was executed there in 16S3. 



The Life of the Streets 

are there and how clever they have to be if 
they are to exist at all. To see a man selling 
goods or performing in the gutter and getting 
in the coppers does not perhaps much impress 
the well-dressed man who passes a foot away on 
the pavement. Let that same man, however, 
go home, empty his pockets, put on his oldest 
clothes, with a little extra dirt and a few fresh 
holes for the occasion, and step out with empty 
pockets from his comfortable home to consider 
himself for twenty-four hours a penniless and 
homeless gutter-man. Food, lodging, fire, the 
most primitive requirements of man, have all 
to be won from the hard, busy, preoccupied, 
unheeding crowd that is passing the new gutter 
recruit each minute. How is he going to begin ? 
Has he the assurance to make himself heard 
above the din of traffic ? Can he persuade the 
callous passer-by that he is in need of the poor 
little thing he has to sell, or can he perform so 
as to hold his attention ? The chances are few 
that he will have the wit or cleverness to make 
even a start, and at the end of the experiment 
he will return supperless and penniless, ashamed 
113 H 



I 



Things Seen in London 

of his former indifference to the man whose 
place he cannot take, seeing he lacks his clever 
adaptability. 

The most familiar of street trades is that of 
the pavement artist. It has its tricks, like all 
other trades. Have little to do with the man of 
woebegone countenance who, with an old golf- 
cap upside down on the pavement at his side, 
sits by a row of boards — his (supposed) artistic 
efforts — for all to see. He is probably only 
a warming-pan for a financier round the corner 
who owns half a dozen such pitches, as they 
are called, and supplies the boards each morning 
(you can see them being brought wrapped up 
in American cloth) and hires the woebegone one 
— the sadder he looks the better, and the 
colder it is the more business, while an east 
wind means wealth — for the day, to whom he 
gives his doss and a few pence over, while he 
himself takes the earnings. See the man do 
his own drawings and see that they are up to 
date, and not merely the fish, or sunset, or 
banana he learned to draw when he was at school. 
Current events and people at the moment in the 
114 



The Life of the Streets 

public eye should be put on the pavement if a 
man really knows his business. The talent of 
some of these men is far beyond the average, and 
they can earn their living by black-and-white 
work and by taking portraits on cards when 
the weather does not favour the pavement. 
Pavement pictures in fine summer weather on a 
good pitch pay well, and from five shillings to 
one pound can be earned easily on busy days ; 
but the pinch comes in the winter, when the 
east wind drives people along the pavement in 
a hurry, and they are little inclined to wait 
even to draw the humble " brown " from the 
pocket and toss it to the artist. 

One man on the Embankment is at least 
original, for he will take your picture in black 
and white on a postcard " while you wait,*" and 
the waiting is generally rather less than three 
minutes. He m ast do these drawings rather skil- 
fully, for he has sitters, or rather standers, all 
day long when the Embankment is well filled on a 
bright warm day. He is a bit of an idealist, and 
will make you look your best. Pavement artists 
— at least, so one of them told our leading 
115 



Things Seen in London 

humorist — cannot paint things too realistically 
on the stones. " Why don't you paint things 
more life-like ? That is not like an apple or 
that like milk." "Well, guv'nor, ifs like 
this," was the reply. '' I used to make 'em 
life-like, but one day when I had some real- 
looking milk on the pavement a nasty cat came 
and drank it up, and since then I've been a bit 
impressionist like." 

The toy yacht clubs on the Serpentine and 
the Round Pond are much patronized by 
Londoners, and any day the little vessels 
may be seen skimming across these waters, 
waited upon by their patient owners. They 
sometimes get into difficulties, too, like larger 
craft, and they often founder, so there is one 
man at least who makes part of his living by 
salving them. Almost any day in different 
parts of the W^est End you may meet him 
wheeling a perambulator fenced round with 
American cloth, upon which a most startling 
announcement, generally on the drink question, 
arrests your attention. In the illustration the 
emphatic motto of the day is : " Woe to her 
ii6 



The Life of the Streets 

who sells poison for drink r He is a temper- 
ance enthusiast, and sells tracts on the subject. 
But at time he hies him to the parks, and either 
by fastening a long line furnished with hooks 
to his little vessel, which he calls the Magnifi- 
cat, or by trailing it from one bank while a 
companion works from the other, he sweeps 
the water so that his hooks foul any derelict 
vessels and bring them to land, and for this he 
is suitably rewarded. A curious way, truly, of 
getting a living. 

The Champion Walker should be known to 
most frequenters of the streets. His magnifi- 
cent head of white hair and his stall covered 
with the literature of his successes attract much 
attention. Sometimes without his stall he 
walks the streets with a card, on which his 
achievements have been written, pendant from 
his neck. He is naturally a strong enthusiast 
about walking exercise, and a chat with him on 
the subject is worth while waiting for. 

Who is the man with a head like an apostle 
and a most benign countenance ? A one-armed 
street singer to be seen almost anywhere from 
117 



Things Seen in London 

Hampstead to Clapham, slowly pacing the never- 
ending streets to the accompaniment of his 
accustomed ditties. Now and then he acts as 
an artist's model, and no wonder. 

The " Buskers " are a large family, and add 
greatly to the gaiety of the London gutter; 
and if it be asked who a busker is — well, he is 
a man who entertains you in the street in some 
way or another. The ways are endless, and 
new kinds of talent are continually coming to 
the front when the old tricks grow stale and 
fail to attract. Some little time ago a busker 
concert was organized in a London suburb. 
Some hundred of the fraternity got their names 
down, but less than half of them were invited 
to perform. The concert was a surprising 
success. The audience was delighted with the 
variety of the talent. Here is a busker who is 
clever enough to play any air you please on one 
string, which has practically a cigar-box as its 
sounding-board aided by a megaphone. If you 
should hear him play you will be surprised at 
the ability of the performer and the capacity of 
the instrument. 

ii8 



The Life of the Streets 

A distinct branch of this business in London 
is concerned with the queues that line up nightly 
at our theatres. The man who devotes himself 
to this work wanders from theatre to theatre, 
visiting the waiting queues. Some of them are 
not very amusing, while others depend upon 
some physical infirmity and do practically 
nothing but beg on the strength of it. There 
are, however, some clever and really amusing 
fellows amongst them. The chapographer, 
whose sole stock-in-trade consists of the brim of 
a hat, has an extensive repertoire, and can, by a 
dexterous twist of the brim and an appropriate 
facial expression, give characters as distinct as 
a nun and a suffragette, a Roman Catholic 
priest and a cavalier. "Talking Hand," who 
paints up the back of his hand to represent a 
face, clothes it in appropriate raiment, and 
begins a ventriloquial conversation with his 
own hand, only suffers because the business is 
too old to compete with more modern devices 
of drawing coppers. It is clever enough in its 
way, and deserves support. 

A man of considerable skill on his instrument 
119 



Things Seen in London 

— the dulcimer — was Will Belasco, only 
recently dead. He always modestly boasted 
that he had performed before King Edward 
and Queen Alexandra. He was a fine executant, 
and one wondered that he should think it worth 
his while to seek the coppers of the queues. 

Not only must the busker have considerable 
skill of a kind to gain and keep attention 
amidst the crowds, traffic, and noise of the 
London streets, but he must also have studied 
his audience. lliese men tell me that a 
beginner is sure to go wrong and fail of success 
unless he knows the varying moods of the 
queues at the different theatres and plays. 
One man falls quite flat and goes away copper- 
less ; another fills his bag. To people waiting 
outside '• The Follies " the same performance 
does not appeal that succeeds with those who 
are prepared to be saddened and shed tears 
over "The Passing of the Third Floor Back/'' 
The genial crowd that will soon be laughing at 
Hawtrey or George Graves are for the time at 
any rate in the mood for quite a different queue 
entertainment from that which will please the 

120 



The Life of the Streets 

idealists who are waiting to see "The Blue Bird/'' 
The queue entertainer only wastes his time and 
jars on the feelings of his audience if he does 
not know sufficient about the performance soon 
to take place inside a theatre and the kind of 
people who are likely to patronize it. 

Many other artists are found in the streets 
as well as those who use the pavement as their 
canvas. Many men with some gift for pencil 
or brush work make drawings of particular 
places on paper or card, and sell them to 
those who come to visit where they sketch. 
One of the oldest and most interesting relics of 
London is the Roman Bath in Strand Lane, 
reached by a narrow entrance and a lane turn- 
ing southwards just opposite the eastern end of 
St. Mary-le-Strand Church. This is a survival 
from Roman times, in excellent preservation, 
and can be seen by visitors every Saturday 
morning from twelve to one. Outside will 
usually be found a street artist who, having 
sketched the inside, does replicas at half a crown 
each, which he sells to those, principally 
Americans, who come to visit the Bath. 

121 



Things Seen in London 

The toyman in the gutter is one of our 
London institutions. Some fresh figure to 
amuse is constantly on sale. The dying pig, 
the little vanman who goes with such frantic 
haste across the pavement and comes to such an 
abrupt halt, or the woolly bear put on the 
hand like a glove and extending its arms 
invitingly to grasp the passer-by — we know 
them all. There is an innumerable family 
of hoppers who jump, jump, jump, down the 
inclined board so nimbly, and the snake who 
wriggles so naturally across his black board, 
but who refuses to act his part so well as soon 
as you get him home. 

Two tradesmen in London at least are 
remarkable for the pets they have adopted, and 
with which they may be seen at times in the 
streets — the butcher who owned a pet lamb, 
and the poulterer with his pet goose. This 
goose is appropriately named " Michael," and 
accompanies his master to lunch, walking the 
streets with complete assurance close to his 
master's heels, who will turn to him from time 
to time with words of encouragement. 

122 



The Life of the Streets 

Street trades were in the past very numerous, 
but in the hurry and bustle of to-day are 
rapidly dying out. These men actually did 
their work and delivered it, having no workshop 
but the pavement. Of course, the knife-grinder 
is one of the oldest, and he is still to be met 
with. Another survival is the basket and 
chair mender. He, finding some spot less 
frequented than others and affording room for 
work and a few steps to sit down on, will 
reseat a chair or rebottom a basket and bring it 
back while you wait. The icecream man, who 
is generally an Italian from Hatton Garden 
district, does a lively trade in summer, while 
in winter he turns his attention to hot chestnuts. 
He is thrifty, patient, polite, acquainted with 
the ways even of the London kiddies, and he 
retires in due time from business and ends 
peaceful days in the warm Italian sunshine 
without a care. Organ-grinders are often from 
the same colony, though many English out- 
of-works and ne'er-do-wells have their half-a- 
crown organ from the man who lets them 
out on hire for the day. The business is not 
123 



Things Seen in London 

what it was in old days, even when Calverly 
wrote of the charm of the 

'^ Grinder, who serenely grindest 
At my door the Hundredth Psalm, 
Till thou ultimately findest 
Pence in thine unvvashen palm.'^ 

The monkey, old-time companion of the 
organ, is hopelessly out of fashion. The 
modern substitute for these childish delights, 
which even now would be a note of gaiety in 
the street, is the piano upon a raised wheeled 
platform and an itinerant singer, male or 
female, with no little power of lung, trolling 
out to the delight of several streets at once, so 
far-reaching is the melody, " Oh, my beautiful 
doll !" 

Altogether the streets of London can never 
be really dull, unless we are too preoccupied in 
ourselves to see what is ffoinoj on around us. 
There is music of a sort, sometimes of a really 
good sort, and foreign authorities have said 
that our street music is the best in the world ; 
queer things for sale as well as humdrum articles 
124 






The Life of the Streets 

such as laces, collar-studs, and hat-guards ; per- 
formances of all kinds from the writhing contor- 
tionist to "Talking Hand"; books, crockery, 
old iron, ices, roasted chestnuts and sweets — 
the tale of them all is endless ; and behind each 
stall or tray or instrument a human personality, 
clever often, needy generally, but able in the 
midst of all the hurly-burly of the streets 
to make us stop, listen, or buy, in spite of our 
preoccupation in business or in pleasure. 



125 



CHAPTER VIII 
BY THE RIVER 

THE River Thames has had many vicissitudes 
during its long connection with London, 
It was the cause of London's birth and deter- 
mined its situation. It has made for ages 
a highway for the coming and going of 
Londoners and for bringing in the produce 
of the world for her use or distributing her 
goods to the ends of the earth . It has had its 
days of popularity and, as at the present time, 
of neglect. The authorities of to-day are 
enclosing it with long lines of embankment, and 
hoping, by doing away with its foreshore, to 
make it more useful for themselves and those 
who come after. The sinuous river is to be 
curbed, its picturesque foreshore is to be swept 
away, and stone walls are to check its wilfulness. 
Perhaps it may be made more useful, but it 
126 



By the River 



must lose much of its old charm. It has long 
ceased to be a highway of the town, as in the 
old days when the people, from the King to 
the poorest, made it their busy street for 
pleasure or for business. To go to the Palace, 
the theatre, the shop, or the church, they used 
the river. To embark on the river in a public 
boat was like taking a bus ; to hail a private 
boat was like hiring a taxi. The man of those 
days knew what London was like from the 
river; to-day we only know the river as seen 
from its banks, and day by day its banks get 
more same and uniform, and one part differs 
less in essentials from another. 

As good a way as any to realize the interest 
of the river and what it has on its banks is to 
take a real or an imaginary steamer and travel, 
say, from Chelsea to London Bridge, noting on 
the way any special features of the river itself 
and the interesting survivals on its banks. 
Even in that short distance the river passes 
widely different districts. Residential, business, 
manufacturing, administrative areas are passed. 
To some parts thousands flock by day to work, 
127 



Things Seen in London 

to others in the evening for home and rest. 
Some are as deserted as the grave by nightfall, 
and others are only beginning to light up and 
become attractive when the day's work is done 
and the time for feeding and amusement has 
come. 

Chelsea has been a notable suburb of London 
from quite early times, and on account of the 
number of great houses and their noble owners 
to be found there came to be known as "the 
village of palaces." Here, by the clear, bright 
river, gay with flowers and gardens and fields 
like the countryside, peace and good air could 
be got after the activities of the capital. Few 
traces of these old houses remain, though the 
old church in their midst on the bank of the 
stream is still with us and shelters under costly 
monuments many of its former parishioners. 

Perhaps the most distinguished of all the 
crreat men who have made a home in Chelsea 
was Sir Thomas More, and there still exist as 
the boundary walls of the old Moravian bury- 
ing-ground the walls of his stable and the 
paddock in which he played with his children. 
128 




I 



By the River 



He built the More Chapel as an appendage to 
the parish church in which he loved to worship, 
hoping for peaceful days in the Manor House 
and rest in the church at last for himself and 
his family. The King who professed to love 
him denied him both. He was commanded 
away from Chelsea to the dangers and cares of 
office, as his friend Erasmus had prophesied 
that he would be. He fell a victim to a 
tyrant whose opinions he could not honestly 
embrace, and after a cruel captivity paid for 
his honesty on the scaffold on Tower Hill. 
His body was buried in St. Peter's ad Vincula 
in the Tower, and his head put upon London 
Bridge. The head came into the possession of 
his daughter, Margaret Roper, who guarded it 
as her priceless treasure for life, and it was 
buried with her in the Roper Tomb in St. 
Dunstan's, Canterbury. 

The Moravian burying-ground is in itself 
interesting, not only on account of the separa- 
tion of the sexes in burial, the lack of epitaphs 
on the stones, the fact that all the gravestones 
lie flat on the ground, but also from the 
129 I 



Things Seen in London 

connection of Count Zinzendorf with the 
Mission, and his making his headquarters and 
that of the Moravian Mission generally in 
England, at Lindsay House on the adjacent 
river bank. A poor little waif has a lonely 
resting-place in one corner of the cemetery — 
one Nuniak, an Eskimo boy, brought back by 
Captain Cook from one of his voyages. 

On the bank of the river near Lindsay House 
will be noticed a small cottage with a flat roof 
and its coping crowned by a rail. Always a 
wanderer and a Bohemian, the painter Turner 
called one day at this house and took lodgings, 
his friends not knowing his whereabouts. He 
had the railing fixed on the top of the house, 
so that he might study the fine cloud effects 
west or east visible from the spot, and it was 
here that he was taken with his last illness. 
When near death he used to be wheeled to the 
window that he might look his last upon the 
gorgeous sky effects for which London is 
remarkable and which the dying man had 
incorporated into so many of his immortal 
pictures of light. 

130 



By the River 



Chelsea Church is a sort of suburban West- 
minster Abbey. It has tombs of many interest- 
ing people who have played a part in history, 
and until lately could boast of being the only 
church in the inner London radius that had 
kept itself free from the ubiquitous church 
restorer. 

The Chelsea Pensioners, whose home lies here 
by the river, add by the scarlet of their quaint 
old uniforms to the gaiety of the London 
streets. Wren erected the present Hospital for 
Charles II. at, we are often told, the suggestion 
of Nell Gwynn, and it remains a typical speci- 
men of the great master's domestic manner. 
It contains many objects of great interest in 
its old Hall and Chapel. Adjoining it are 
stretches of greensward and formal paths, the 
happy playground of the charges who are 
brought by white-clad nursemaids, where were 
once the waterways, gardens, and Rotunda of 
the celebrated Ranelagh Gardens, the most 
select and aristocratic of London's eighteenth- 
century alfresco playgrounds. 

Peace, even to-day, still reigns supreme in 
131 



Things Seen in London 

the Herb Garden near at hand. It is the oldest 
of its kind in this country, and is the only one 
remaining of the three celebrated gardens that 
we once had in our midst in London. There 
was Gerard's in Hoi born and the garden of the 
Tradescants at Lambeth, but they have both 
disappeared. A statue of Sir Hans Sloane by 
Rysbrach will be found in the garden, and 
justly, since at a crisis in its history he came in 
and saved it from the builder. No one should 
miss this old-world place, which still carries on 
its useful work as a place of study for L.C.C. 
students, who can gather in the garden the 
specimens which they require to examine in the 
laboratory built here for their use. 

Another London playground of old days was 
on the site of the Vauxhall Station of the 
South- Western Railway and the streets adjoin- 
ing it on the south-east, several of which by 
their names indicate their connection with old 
days, such as Tyers Street. Tyers was the 
family name of the last proprietors of the 
Gardens. The Jonathan Tyers of Hogarth's; 
day was a great friend of his, for whom h 

1^2 



"I 



By the River 



painted several pictures and was presented in 
return with a golden souvenir giving free 
admission to the Gardens for ever to himself 
and a coachload of his friends. The fathers of 
the present generation can no doubt remember 
these Gardens, for they lingered on into the 
mid-nineteenth century, being famous for the 
slices of ham which were cut so thin that it was 
said that a skilful carver could cover all the 
acres of the Gardens with the slices from a single 
ham. 

Lambeth Church and churchyard are both of 
interest. In the church will be found a window 
of insignificant dimensions, known as the 
Pedlar's Window. A bargain was struck with 
the parish by this old wanderer on behalf of 
himself and his favourite dog, and it was 
agreed that he would leave to the people of 
Lambeth his little savings if they on their part 
would agree to put up a window, showing the 
man and his dog, in their church, and to bury 
them as near together as circumstances allowed. 
So the parish got the savings and spent them 
in buying an acre of land, which used to bring 
133 



I 



Things Seen in London 

in a few shillings in old times for the good of 
the poor. To show how land has increased in 
value in London, it may be added that a year 
or so ago, in laying the foundations of their 
new County Hall on the south-eastern end 
of Westminster Bridge, the London County 
Council disturbed the Pedlar s acre, and com- 
pensation was sought for that disturbance and 
the claim made was for ^30,000. 

In the churchyard will be found a curious 
old altar tomb with very quaint adornments 
such as shells, an armadillo, ruins of buildings, 
and suchlike. This is where the brothers 
Tradescant, who owned the Herb Garden at 
Lambeth, are buried, and these emblems are 
put upon their tomb to commemorate the fact 
that they were great collectors of curiosities. 
Their extensive collection came into the posses- 
sion of Elias Ashmole, and formed the major 
part of the contents of the Ashmolean Museum 
still existing at Oxford. The view of the 
Houses of Parliament from this point is 
probably one of the finest to be had. 

Lambeth Palace is one of those places re- 
134 





P art^-idge' s 



Yfictorial Press 



CLEOPATRA S NEEDLE 



This monolith had no connection whatever with Cleopatra and dates back 
to B.C. 1500. 



By the River 



quiring many chapters to itself, and therefore not 
coming within the scope of this little book, but 
suffice it to say that the Palace itself, as well as 
the Library, is filled with historical treasures, 
and formed the setting^ of manv events which 
have made history, and should by all means be 
visited by those who desire to know something 
of London. The Tower, through which entrance 
is obtained at the present time, was built by 
Cardinal Morton, in whose household as a youth 
Sir Thomas More served, and who had the wit 
to predict the future greatness of his pupil. 
It was in the Chapel that Laud communed with 
himself before his trial, and it was from the 
Palace steps, which then were the natural way 
of embarking, that he started on his last 
journey to the Tower. 

The banks of the river on the north side 
from here to Blackfriars are lined with a 
pleasant boulevard, backed by many large and 
noble buildings, such as the New Scotland 
Yard, Whitehall Court, and such places of 
historical interest and import as the Temple. 
The noble sweep of Adelphi Terrace, which 
135 



Things Seen in London 

can be seen from the river, has Garrick's house 
near its centre, and has behind it all that little 
nucleus of streets built by the brothers Adam 
in the eighteenth century, and acquired from 
the builders mainly by the lottery system. It 
will be noticed that the brothers Adam have 
called the streets in the Adelphi by their own 
Christian names. A group of streets which 
abuts on Villiers Street and backs upon the 
York Gate already described was built just 
before Pepys came to live in Buckingham 
Street, upon ground which had belonged to the 
first Duke of Buckingham. His son in selling it 
(he was the Duke who was so severely handled 
by Dryden in " Absalom and Achitophel ") 
made the stipulation that the streets there built 
should be named after himself. So even to-day 
we get the following street names : George 
Street, Villiers Street, Duke Street, Buckingham 
Street, and there used to be " Of Alley ,'"* but 
the name has been altered. Pepys's house 
occupied the same ground as the one looking 
out on the gardens at the south-western corner 
of Buckingham Street. 

136 




[ Kodak 



LONDON IJKIDGE 



Tbe present Bridge was begun in IS-Jo near the site of the old bridge, and 
widened in 1903. 



By the River 



Two great hotels, the Savoy and the Cecil, 
the dining-places of multi-millionaires, now 
come into view where of old the private houses 
of the nobles had place, while the old Chapel of 
the Savoy is in one of those peaceful backwaters 
of which London has so many and used to have 
more. It is not the chapel of the old Palace of 
John of Gaunt— this was burnt by the rebels 
under Wat Tyler — but the chapel of the Leper 
Hospital which was built upon its site. Waterloo 
Bridge, which here spans the river, is one of 
the most satisfactory of our modern bridges, 
built by Rennie. It indicates its approximate 
date by its own name, Waterloo Bridge, and 
the name of the street constructed to give 
access to it, Wellington Street. 

From Blackfriars Bridge (where under the 
first arch on the north side the old Fleet River 
can still be seen issuing from a culvert) right 
on to the Tower there are a series of private 
docks and quays, which close this part of the 
river to the public save where, as at Dowgate, 
there is an open space and a public right-of- 
way. 

^o7 



Things Seen in London 

One of the early theatres with which Shake- 
speare was associated is commemorated in 
Playhouse Yard, and in the churchyard of St. 
Anne's will be seen quite a goodly fragment of 
the Church of the Blackfriars Monastery, while 
one of the pillars is in possession of the monks 
of a Benedictine House in the north of London. 
Two facts about Shakespeare, amongst the 
few we have, are connected with this locality. 
Ireland Yard takes its name from a man of 
that name who made conveyance of a house 
hereabout to Shakespeare, while on a tablet 
under an archway in Carter Lane it is recorded 
that the only letter known to have been 
addressed to Shakespeare was written from the 
tavern formerly on that site. 

Perhaps here the opposite side of the river is 
the more interesting since, if Blackfriars Bridge 
be crossed and advantage be taken of a subway 
on the east side of the south approach to the 
Bridge, it will conduct us at once into Bankside, 
near to the site of Holland's Leaguer. Opposite 
is Falcon Draw Dock, where the Falcon Tavern, 
the haunt of Raleigh, Southampton, and the 
138 



By the River 



actors of the Bankside, formerly stood. To 
understand the ancient appearance of this 
district and the way in which the old lanes 
have persisted, and to fix the positions of the 
theatres in the memory, an old map is essential. 
Suffice it to say that the site of the Globe 
Theatre, the Round O, is indicated by a 
medallion let into the wall of Barclay's Brewery 
in Park Street, that the field paths leading 
from the river to the theatres, bear and bull- 
baiting rings, and to the stews, in direction, 
width, and windings, follow exactly their old 
courses. Rose Alley, which led to the Rose 
Theatre ; Love Lane leading to the stews ; 
Bear Gardens, where an open space indicates 
the position of the old pit — all can be followed. 
To look at Holland Street on a modern survey 
map and again on one of the old maps is to 
realize one of the most interesting bits of 
London topography, for Holland Street to-day 
follows the course of the millstream which 
encircled an old mill and the Falcon Inn. 

Bankside is now on weekdays a busy centre 
of industry and manufacture, but on Sundays 
139 



Things Seen in London 

it goes back to its one-time peacefulness, and 
there is no one to be seen but a few mudlarks, 
an inhabitant or two, and the peripatetic 
policeman. Here one of the best views of 
St. PauPs from the river is obtainable, and 
its dominating position on its hill above the 
city is realized. The hinterland of Bankside is 
not very interesting as soon as the theatre 
district is passed, but Redcross Gardens and 
Hall are important, for here, as well as in 
the Postman's Park near the old St. Martin's- 
le-Grand, an effort has been made to record for 
future generations the noble deeds of the poor 
and the unknown. Redcross Hall has illustra- 
tions by Walter Crane of some of these notable 
heroisms in humble life. 

High Street, Borough, is only a few minutes"' 
walk from the Bank End, and keeps in remem- 
brance the numerous old galleried inns of which 
only one, the George, has survived to our day, 
and it may be the actual inn intended by 
Dickens as the scene of the first meeting of 
Sam Weller with his future master. Here was 
the cruel prison of the Marshalsea, which is 
140 



By the River 

mentioned often in the pages of Dickens ; and, 
of course, it was at St. George's Church, at the 
southern end of the High Street, that " Little 
Dorrit," the magic creature of the great story- 
teller's brain, underwent some of her more 
notable experiences. Here she rested in the 
vestry, and her baptism and her marriage in 
the old church seem more real than all the 
actual happenings. The imprisonment and 
death of Bonner in the Marshalsea, the great 
fire that swept the district and just spared the 
George and burned the Half Moon, which is 
figured in Hogarth's " Southwark Fair," are 
matters of history. We seek in vain now for 
any trace of the Old Tabard, in order that 
the creations of brain of another great story- 
teller in the early spring days of English history 
may live before us. It has been superseded by a 
building of so hideous a modernity, with the 
same old title, that one can only wish that the 
name had been allowed to drop out altogether. 
Cocker, the drawing and writing master whose 
fine specimen writing and flourishes Samuel 
Pepys preserved with so much care in his 
141 



Things Seen in London 

library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, is 
buried in St. George's Church, and he still fixes 
the standard of elegance by the persistence 
of the expression which made him the rule 
of all exactness — " according to Cocker." 

Bankside ends near London Bridge, and the 
open public way along the river ceases with it. 
Dickens has his associations with the Bridge, 
since it was on its steps that Nancy met Mr. 
Brownlow, and was followed by Sykes and 
afterwards done to death. Those who would 
realize the position of old London Bridge 
should stand on the steps on the south-eastern 
side and look across to St. Magnus's Church, 
under the archway of the tower of which foot- 
passengers emerged from the old Bridge into 
the traffic of the Citv. 



142 



CHAPTER IX 
LONDON BY NIGHT 

LONDON'S night is a short one. Two or 
three hours at most suffice, and even then 
only a portion of London sleeps. If you arrive 
in London at any late hour and drive to your 
destination, unless you are cm fait with its night 
aspects, you cannot fail to be surprised at the 
amount of traffic in the streets, the numbers of 
people seen, and the shops that stand open. 
Rows of taxi-cabs wait at Charing Cross on 
the hill opposite Morley's, as by day. Early 
breakfast shops are opening, with a queue 
waiting to be served. Hundreds of men in the 
picturesque dress and high boots of the road- 
cleaner are handling the hoses by which the 
roads are cleansed, while the light from arc- 
lamps is reflected in the dripping roadways and 
the water spurting from the nozzle of the hose 
Ho 



Things Seen in London 

as it strikes in a cataract on the pavement. 
Tired M.P.'s are hurrying to a belated bed 
after a late sitting in the House, and Covent 
Garden carts are moving steadily to their 
destination. There is but a dribble of traffic so 
early, but it will become a torrent later on as 
the light of day begins to glow over the city. 
There is more life in London in the dead of 
night than in many small country towns in the 
busy midday. 

If Dr. Johnson, in days when but feeble oil- 
lamps made the darkness of the streets visible, 
or a candle in every window seemed a jubilee 
decoration, thought that Vauxhall Gardens, lit 
up with its thousands of oil-lamps, was one of 
the most glorious sights in creation, what would 
he think of the brilliant illumination of Ix)ndon 
with its thousands of arc-lamps on every evening 
of the year ? The central thoroughfares of 
London seem as light as day, and, as those 
know who are accustomed to photograph the 
streets by their own lights, are getting steadily 
brighter. Every winter some improvement 
gives a still more brilliant power to the lamps. 
144 




I A oaak 



THE TOWER BRIDGE 



Was built in lSSG-04. The carnage way is formed of two bascules ( 
drawbridges worked by hydraulic power to enable vessels of large tonnaj 
to pass at high tide. 



London by Night 

For the artistic eye the night pageant of 
London begins as soon as the great hghts flare 
out by street and square and boulevard. Giant 
patterns, the shadows of the trees and buildings, 
are flung by their radiance across the roadway, 
picturesque and mysterious, while trees in 
shadow are silhouetted against those in brilliant 
light when the arc- light glows between. In 
autumn the night pageant is increased, for the 
fallen leaves are scattered on the pavement, and 
through the half- bare branches the light effects 
are better seen. When viewed from the centre 
of some bridge or from some dominant height 
the lamps that ring the Embankment make 
fairy patterns with light reflected in the mud or 
the water below. 

Later, when half London, leaving thought of 
work, turns to feeding and enjoying itself, the 
theatre fronts are ablaze and their lights and 
shadows are reflected in the wet or greasy 
pavements at their base or in the waters of 
some adjacent fountain. Whistler was the first 
to see, and to try and make others see, the 
beauty of the great city by night. Many will 
145 K 



Things Seen in London 

remember the now well-known passage in which 
he tells of the impression that it makes upon 
the artist : " When the evening mist clothes 
the riverside with poetry as with a veil, and the 
poor buildings lose themselves in the sky, and 
the tall chimneys become campanili, and the 
warehouses are palaces in the night, and the 
whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is 
before him, Nature sings her exquisite song to 
the artist.'' No one with any feeling for beauty 
has, on one of London's misty evenings, leaned 
on the Embankment wall and seen the fairy- 
lights across on the Surrey side reflected in the 
still water, along with the mysterious stains 
which are the reflections of the wharves and 
warehouses, without feeling that at times at 
night London can be a second Venice. These 
moods of hers are rare, but when they are seen 
they can never be forgotten. The blue hour at 
night, or, better still, in the early morning 
hours, once seen, will ever be remembered. 

These effects are for the painter, but it is 
some satisfaction to the photographer that 
at least a few of them are, in these days of 
146 



London by Night 

fast plates, large-aperture lenses, and skilful 
development, made possible for him. So 
rapidly can these more blatant effects be 
secured where the great arc- lights are shining 
that people looking into shop- windows, the 
goods displayed, the fronts of theatres, can be 
snapshotted almost as by day. 

Nowadays the fine effects which the modern 
stagecraft provides are pressed into the service 
of the photographer, and it is possible to 
register them by their own light, without the 
aid of the unnatural lighting produced by a 
flashlight under such circumstances. 

Perhaps the best way to emphasize the things 
to be seen in London at night, as far as the 
ordinary person can look into that strange 
world of labour, pleasure, sin, and crime, will be 
to feign a walk " while London sleeps," and 
describe what can quite easily be seen by almost 
anyone who can stand the fatigue of an 
all-night tramp. 

About 11 o'clock a start may be made, say 
from Trafalgar Square, where beautiful effects 
of light on buildings, reflections in the 
147 



Things Seen in London 

fountains, now mirrors of still water, the 
commanding figures of the great lions in light 
and shade, may be noticed before the walk 
begins. Here, too, is a good place from which 
to observe how the crowds assemble and disperse 
many times as the night-hours pass. At 7 p.m., 
or before, queues are hurriedly forming at the 
theatre doors ; by 7.45 the queues have melted 
into individuals seated in their places in the 
pit or gallery of the theatre or music-hall, and 
carriages are setting down those who have 
reserved seats. Between 8.30 and 10.30 is the 
dullest time of the London night. A few 
taxis are taking up points of vantage to catch 
fares when the theatres are over, a few diners 
not going to the theatre are passing by, but the 
newsvendors, with the latest editions, take little 
trouble to cry their wares on such empty 
streets. 

Before 11 o'clock things are getting brisker 
again. One or two entertainment houses are 
emptying and the crowd is rapidly increasing 
The vehicles are soon streaming from the theatre 
doors. This great flow of traffic is over by about 
148 



London by Night 

1 1 .30 or 1 1 .40. Then there is a lesser but quite 
apparent stream ; the entertainers follow the 
entertained either to supper or home, and 
actors, artistes, performers of all kinds, take 
the pavement. At midnight fresh streams are 
spreading outwards from the rapidly closing 
houses of entertainment, and later a small 
dribble of waiters and hands from the same 
houses mingle with the few loiterers from the 
late supper-rooms. A few years ago the festive 
crowds were allowed greater licence. They 
made pandemonium in the Haymarket and 
Piccadilly Circus and round the purlieus of the 
old Argyll Rooms, and hardly noticed the 
vigorous " Pass on !" of the posse of police. 
These orgies are not allowed to-day, and, except 
on armistice nights and at suchlike times, no 
scenes of that kind are tolerated. 

Before starting on a night ramble, permission 
should have been obtained to visit the printing 
works of some great daily newspaper to view 
the last correcting of proofs, the final setting of 
type, the casting of the cylinders, and finally the 
production at so many thousands a minute of 
149 



Things Seen in London 

the printed and folded copies. As the printing 
office is left, copies of the day's issue are given 
to the visitor many hours in advance of public 
sales. 

By this time it is between 1 and 2 o'clock, 
and a cup of coffee does not come amiss. 
Coffee-stalls are to be found at most crucial 
points in the streets, and many of them are 
well known and have their regular customers 
all the year through. Victoria, Hyde Park 
Corner, the Mansion House, and many other 
places, have their stalls, where one is always 
sure to get a sight of some real night-birds and 
the usual types that play the same part in the 
streets as the owls and the bats of the country- 
side. It may happen that, should your pity 
move you to offer some food to a poor, hungry, 
down-at-heel loafer near by, he will modestly 
tell you to give it to " the chap over there," 
who is really hungry, or, if he takes it, he will 
probably give it away to some mate near by, and 
join you after you have got a few streets away and 
explain that he really meant no discourtesy, but 
that he is a detective in private clothes just 
150 



London by Night 

walking about the streets in the dead of night 
to see what the undesirables are about, or to 
nab some " wanted " man who has thought it 
safe to break cover thus, once in the twenty-four 
hours. 

Through the silent, almost empty streets, 
before the flush of dawn begins to appear over 
the city and pales the street-lamps, we can slip 
down to the Embankment, where sleepers in 
every attitude of discomfort and unrest are 
snatching a brief slumber before being " called 
early " by the peripatetic policeman. Some, if 
the night be very bitter, will have to be taken 
off to the nearest hospital on a stretcher, and 
their old haunts will know them no more, 
while the happy, or perhaps unhappy, survivors 
will seek a wash on the river stairs, or go off to 
get such a breakfast as the bins placed upon 
the edge of the pavements may afford them 
before the rag-and-bone merchant pays his 
early call. 

Philanthropists had been busy doing what 
they could for the Embankment sleeper. They 
were lined up night by night in severe weather 
151 



Things Seen in London 

in order to march down between about 3 and 
4 a.m. to get hot soup at the Salvation Army 
Shelter, while individuals, often themselves 
working late at theatre or music-hall, would buy 
up the remains on a coffee-stall and serve them 
out, as long as they last, to all and sundry. 
But this kindly sympathy and help only 
attracted a fresh crowd the next night from 
other parts of London, and the problem was 
still unsolved as to how the richest city in the 
world was to relieve first and give permanent 
betterment afterwards to the starving, hope- 
less, homeless crowd within its gate, when 
war practically solved the position in a few 
months, and the Embankment is now practi- 
cally deserted and only a few stragglers are to 
be seen. One who was for many months one 
of that unfortunate band who have no food 
and no shelter, but who, by the cleverness of 
his pencil, has made London provide him with 
both, has sketched the amusing side of the 
nightly life on the Embankment, and offers this 
advice to those who have no " doss " — namely, 
to go round early and collect all the newspapers 

i52 




SO.MKltSET lIorSK FUOJI THE K.AU^ANKMENT 

On the site of the Palace begun by the Lord Protector Somerset in 1547, 
It is now occupied by various Government offices, the east wing by King's 
College. 



London by Night 

that are available. The political opinions of 
the papers are not of so much account as 
their substance, and so perhaps a copy of the 
Times will come in more handy than the Daily 
Mail. Then, when night comes on and bed- 
time approaches, some of the papers spread 
beneath make the mattress, and the others, 
wj-apped round the person, form the coverlet. 
Joking apart, many men and women had no 
better covering than this from the biting cold 
of a winter's night, and in many cases it did 
not suffice for the sick or the aged, and the 
night's cold sleep passed into the longer and 
colder sleep of death, and the ambulance came 
to fetch them away in the morning. 

Any of the streets leading up from the 
Embankment in fche neighbourhood of Water- 
loo Bridge bring one in a few minutes across 
the Strand to Covent Garden. Carts of all 
sorts laden with produce or gay with flowers 
have been slowly accumulating for hours in 
King's Street and Henrietta Street and all the 
neighbouring throughfares, while Long Acre is 
so blocked that traffic only advances, if it does 
153 



Things Seen in London 

at all, at an occasional footpace. Trays of 
flowers have been arriving at Floral Hall from 
midnight onwards, and by daylight it is a 
gorgeous flower garden waiting for the arrival 
of the auctioneer and his buyers. Fruit is piled 
high in boxes and baskets on a hundred carts, 
and the famous Covent Garden porters shouting 
the names of their firm are carrying loads, 
varying from six to twenty baskets, on their 
heads, with a fine balance, to their destination. 
For these porters the day begins in the middle 
of the night and ends when other people are 
sitting down to breakfast. By eleven in the 
morning they are spruced up, if they trouble to 
do it, in a change of suit and taking their early 
or for them late drink at the public-house near 
their homes. 

By the time the porters have nearly done 
their work the road-cleaners take possession of 
the Garden, and their hoses are swilling water 
in a glistening stream on road and pavement, and 
washing away mud and the waste of flowers and 
fruit and making things tidy for the business 
man who will soon be arriving at his office. 
154 



London by Night 

Long after others have departed little groups 
of women can be found in odd corners shelling 
peas and doing other little jobs of similar 
nature. A few extra cheap bunches of flowers 
and baskets of fruit having been secured at 
wholesale prices from some friendly dealer soon 
after the early arrival at the Garden, a start 
may be made for home, and there will be time 
for a hot bath and a few hours' sleep before 
joining the rest of the household at a late 
breakfast. 

Few people will regret having seen this night 
aspect of London. Not only has it the charm 
of novelty, but it is a unique experience which 
most people enjoy. Day in London has its own 
attractions, but in variety and interest they can 
hardly compare wdth "things seen" between 
the dai'k and the dawn. 



155 



INDEX 






A 




PAGES 


Abbey Cloisters 


- 


- 37 


Adelphi Terrace 


- 


135, 136 


Aklgate Pump 


- 


- 60 


Alfresco Entertainment 


75, 76, 


77, 78, 79 


B 






Bankside - - - 


-13c 


), 140, 141 


Borough Inns 


_ 


- 91 


Boulevards in London 


,. 


- 75 


Burial Grounds or Gardens 


_ 


72, 73 


Buskers in London 


- 


- 118 


C 

Cecil Hotel 




- 137 


Champion Walker - 


- 


- 117 


Charles I. on Horseback 


. 


31 


Cheapside - 


- 


- 48 


Chelsea 


- 


- 128 


Chelsea Herb Garden 


» 


- 132 


Chelsea Hospital - 


. 


- 131 


156 







Index 



" Cheshire Cheese " 


. 


. 


PAGES 

- 101 


City Wells 


- 


- 


108, 109 


Clerk enwell — Cheap Books 


- 


23 


Cocke Inn - 


- 


- 


- 101 


Cock Lane Ghost - 


- 


_ 


- 98 


Cockspur Street 


- 


- 


41 


Coffee Stalls 


- 


- 


150, 151 


Covent Garden Market 


D 


15 


3, 154, 155 


Destruction in London 


- 


- 


80 


Dock Warehouses - 


- 


- 


53, 54, 55 


Dunstan's Church • 


- 


- 


85 


Dunstan's Clock 


. 


- 


109, 110 


Dutch Tenters 


G 


" 


53 


George Villiers^ Duke of Bu 


[;kingham 


- 136 


Ghetto, The 


- 


- 


- 61 


Goldsmith's House 


. 


. 


86, 87 


Gough Square 


- 


- 


81, 82 


Greenery of London 


- 


- 


- 66 


Gutter Merchants - 


H 


" 


- 122 


Haymarket 


- 


- 


38 


Heart of London, The 


- 


- 


- 22-30 


Historic Houses 


- 


- 


80 


Hogarth's House - 


- 




- 86 


Home of Prince Henry 


157 


- 


- 87 



Index 



I— J 



Iron Lamp Brackets 
Italian Colony 
Johnson's House 



PAGES 

- 92 
21 

81, 82 



Lamb, Charles 
Lambeth Church - 
Lambeth Palace 
Lansdowne Passage 
Leicester Square 
Lindsay House 
Local Trading 
Lombard Street 
London Bridge Survival 
London by Night - 
London's River 



83, 84 

- 133 
134^, 135 

- 103 
39,40 

- 130 

- 49 
55 

- 108 
143-155 

126, 127 



M 
Martin's Lane 
Martyrs' Memorial - 
Moravian Burial Ground 
More, Sir Thomas - 
Municipal Parks 

N 
Newspaper Offices, A Visit to 
Night in London - 

158 



41, 42 
51 

- 129 
128, 129 

- 71 



149, 150 
- 143 



Index 
o 



Organ-Grinders 


- 


PAGES 

- 123 


Palaces of London - 


P 


43, 47 


Panyer Alley 
Pavement Artists - 


- 


- 99 
114, 116 


Pedlar's Acre 


_ 


133, 134 


Penderel, Richard - 


- 


- 110 


Pepys and his District 
Pets in Streets 


- 


56, 51 
- 122 


Petticoat Lane 


. 


6i, 62, 6S 


Processions through City - 


- 49 



Q 

Queue Entertainers - - 119, 120 

R 

Reynolds's House - - - 85, 86 

Roman Bath - - - - 21 

Running Footmen - - - - 100 

S 

Savoy Hotel - - - - 137 

Shop Signs - - • 95, 98 

Shoreditch - - . 64, 65 

Sleepers on the Embankment - 151, 153 

Smithfield - - - - 50, 51 

Southwark - - - - 140, 141 

Staple Inn - - - - 88, 89 
159 



Ind 



ex 



Sterne's Home 

Strand 

Strange Survivals - 

Street Name- Plates 

Street Trades 



Ten-Mile Walk, A - 
Tower Hill 
Tradescants' Tomb 
Traffic Posts 
Travellers' Rest 
Tyburn Tree 

U— V- 

United Service Museum 
Vauxhall Gardens - 
Water-Gates in Strand 
Whitechapel Art Gallery 
Whitehall - 



-W 



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